Future of Business: Moderna’s Founder on Innovation That Breaks Through

In this HBR IdeaCast episode, Alison Beard interviews Noubar Afeyan, founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and co-founder/chair of Moderna, about breakthrough innovation across industries. Afeyan distinguishes between continuous and discontinuous innovation, advocating for companies to pursue both by envisioning future states and working backward. He advises against solely focusing on adjacent innovations due to commoditization risks and suggests structuring separate, differently motivated teams for disruptive leaps. The conversation explores AI's role in augmenting human intelligence, particularly in variance generation, and draws parallels between innovation processes and Darwinian evolution. Afeyan emphasizes open-mindedness, iteration, and opportunism as key elements of successful breakthroughs, while also addressing the impact of political environments on scientific progress, highlighting the importance of immigration and scientific integrity for societal advancement.