From the course: Career Advice from Some of the Biggest Names in Business

Vasant Narasimhan on the key to doing extraordinary things

From the course: Career Advice from Some of the Biggest Names in Business

Vasant Narasimhan on the key to doing extraordinary things

(upbeat music) You're only going to be able to do extraordinary things if you're passionate about it. And I know that's, often people say that. It's incredible to me how rare it is that people actually follow through on that approach. - Yeah, sure, you're getting all of this conflicting advice, climb the ladder, this is the right place to be, this how you get attention. Going in an alternate direction, and saying, "I'm just going to do what I want," might mean a dead end. Were you were worried about that at all? - Was I worried? Maybe a little. I've also, I think, I have a great, incredible wife, who's incredibly supportive of me always, travels around the world wherever we need to go. And because I had that security of knowing that whatever happened, we were going to figure it out, then, yeah, you take the plunge. - You're one of only two physicians who run major pharma companies, and one of a very small number of one-time physicians who are the tops of large companies. What kind of insight does having been a practicing doctor, how does that change at all how you run the company, how you think about what you're doing, in a positive way or a negative way? - Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I mean, one, I have a lens, always, of what is the impact this is going to have on medicine, and what is the impact it's going to have on patients? Whether that's a business action we're going to take. So does a action to bring forward a new sales force, is that going to help us bring more medicines to patients? Similarly, with the innovations that we bring forward. The other thing I'm able to do is something with new technologies. Whether it's cell therapies or gene therapies or RNA therapies, I'm able to go deep on the science, and really understand what is behind that, and get comfortable with the risks because there's always risks with these technologies. I think the combination of having that medical-patient lens and understanding the medicines themselves, the technology, I think it enable you make some of the tougher calls. I'd say the other element is because I was an R&D executive for so long, I'm very comfortable with failing. I mean, we fail far more often than we succeed in R&D. Only one out of 10 medicines in our our industry, that enter into people, actually get to the finish line. So you fail a lot, and you get pretty comfortable with it, which means you're more comfortable taking some strategic bets. And I've tried to do that already now, in my start as CEO. - The numbers are so low on the number of doctors who get into business. Do you think that more of them need to be thinking these about these kind of paths? - I think it's got to be what your passion is. I mean, when I think of what took me into this direction was, again, a big interest in public health and having an impact on populations, where, of course, in medicine as important, but you're impacting an individual patient. And the second is I love leadership. I'm a student of leadership. (upbeat music)

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