Joining Flagship Pioneering

On Oc­to­ber 1st, I’ll be join­ing Flag­ship Pi­on­eer­ing as their first Chief In­form­a­tion and Di­git­al Of­ficer.

I can al­most hear you say­ing “wait, what? What is Flag­ship Pi­on­eer­ing? What is that ‘Di­git­al’ thing sit­ting in the middle of that Chief In­form­a­tion Of­ficer title? And ser­i­ously, I thought you wer­en’t look­ing for a job?”

Right. Me too. But it was too good to walk away from.

Al­low me to ex­plain in a bit more depth…

Flag­ship Pi­on­eer­ing is a fas­cin­at­ing com­pany that cre­ates oth­er com­pan­ies, largely bi­otechs. It was foun­ded by Noubar Afey­an around the year 2000, based on the concept of in­sti­tu­tion­al­iz­ing en­tre­pren­eur­ship and build­ing com­pan­ies, rather than the clas­sic­al ven­ture cap­it­al mod­el of in­vest­ing funds in new com­pan­ies. It spe­cial­izes in cre­at­ing com­pan­ies that are pur­su­ing ideas that oth­ers are not. Over the years, it has launched more than 96 new com­pan­ies. Re­cently, Flag­ship has turned its fo­cus to help­ing its in­vest­ments grow and suc­ceed bey­ond the ini­tial launch, while con­tinu­ing to launch 6-8 new com­pan­ies a year.

I first heard from Flag­ship as I was wind­ing down my ca­reer at No­vartis. My plan was to take a good, long time to re­cov­er be­fore look­ing for my next job… at least the sum­mer and ideally more. Among oth­er things, I hadn’t put sig­ni­fic­ant thought in­to what I wanted to do next. I knew I didn’t want to take an­oth­er ma­jor lead­er­ship role in an­oth­er huge, glob­al com­pany… been there, done that. Crushed it. Then got crushed by it.

Bey­ond that, I wasn’t sure. Bi­otech? Per­haps. Con­sult­ing? In­triguing in many ways. Big Tech? Per­haps, de­pend­ing. Snow­board in­struct­or? Sounds like fun, but a bit im­prac­tic­al.

The most com­pel­ling op­tion was start­ing my own com­pany. While at No­vartis, I began to un­der­stand that the most in­nov­at­ive and game-chan­ging work on the plan­et takes place in small com­pan­ies pur­su­ing crazy ideas with pas­sion and ima­gin­a­tion. I’m in­trigued by that space. I’m ar­gu­ably my most com­fort­able when lead­ing or­gan­iz­a­tions that face com­plex chal­lenges. And I be­lieve that the Pharma world is ripe for tech­no­logy-driv­en dis­rup­tion.

I in­ten­ded to put aside those sorts of thoughts for the sum­mer… to get out­side, to hike, to bike, and to read, and then to come back in the fall to con­sider all the vari­ous op­tions with a fresh per­spect­ive.

Then, an old ac­quaint­ance who re­cently joined Flag­ship gave me a call. She said two things that were in­ter­est­ing.

First, she said Flag­ship wasn’t in the busi­ness of bi­otech in­vest­ing: it was in the busi­ness of cre­at­ing and grow­ing bi­otechs - com­pan­ies that each faced their own chal­lenges and needed help in unique ways. It was about the nov­el ideas and the com­pany cre­ation, not about the in­vest­ment fund.

Second, she said Flag­ship was in need of someone who un­der­stands the po­ten­tial of tech­no­logy in the worlds of bio­logy and in or­gan­iz­a­tion­al growth; someone who’s seen a lot of what works and what doesn’t; someone who wants to have im­pact.

Could I just drop by and have a few con­ver­sa­tions with people at Flag­ship to dis­cuss what’s hap­pen­ing at the in­ter­sec­tion of tech and bio­logy?

Sure. Why not? Soun­ded like fun.

While there, I met some very in­ter­est­ing people. People who start com­pan­ies. People who have had amaz­ing ca­reers else­where and are bring­ing that ex­pert­ise to Flag­ship’s mis­sion.

So I went back for an­oth­er con­ver­sa­tion. Then an­oth­er.

I learned that they have a need for someone to guide the IT strategy and im­ple­ment­a­tion, not just at Flag­ship it­self, but in all the new com­pan­ies that they cre­ate and grow. (That’s the “In­form­a­tion”.). That doesn’t sound too chal­len­ging… but how best to get IT right so that it’s an en­a­bler, not a stum­bling block, for a di­verse com­munity of young com­pan­ies? That’s a com­pel­ling prob­lem.

I also learned that there’s a need to en­able data and di­git­al tech­no­lo­gies stra­tegic­ally across the Flag­ship en­ter­prise, and po­ten­tially to ex­plore them in the de­vel­op­ment of con­cepts for new com­pan­ies. (And that’s the “Di­git­al”) Huge chal­lenge; huge op­por­tun­ity.

Flag­ship checks all the boxes… it’s small, it’s loc­al, it’s flex­ible. It has clear vis­ion, is full of amaz­ing people, has a track re­cord of real im­pact, and is grow­ing with in­tent. It’s a place to learn, ex­plore, and make a dif­fer­ence.

I’m in.