Noubar Afeyan on the Permission to Leap (Ep. 113)

I, some 25 years ago, decided that it would be much more productive if we could think about which aspects could be made more professional.

大约 25 年前，我认为如果我们能够思考哪些方面可以变得更加专业，那么效率会更高。

The first way to do that is to figure out that it’s neither genetic nor somehow only about these amorphous characteristics than hard work, learning ways to do the future-backwards planning that we’re involved in.

第一种方法是弄清楚这既不是遗传因素，也不是仅仅与这些无定形特征有关，而是与努力工作有关，学习如何进行我们所参与的未来向后规划。

It turns out those things can be learned by both practice and by hearing about case examples and how people make decisions.

事实证明，这些东西可以通过实践和聆听案例以及人们如何做出决策来学习。

In that regard, if you think of the traditional startup methodology, what one needs to do is to take a scientific breakthrough or an innovation — typically in the life sciences — that comes from academia; managerial skills to both initiate and then grow and manage the growth of; and then capital.

在这方面，如果你想到传统的创业方法，你需要做的是采取科学突破或创新 ——“通常是在生命科学领域”——来自学术界；启动、发展和管理其成长的管理技能；然后是资本。

If all three of those things come in together and coexist harmoniously, and the product works, and the pricing is right, and the execution is right, then you get a gigantic overnight success.

如果所有这三件事和谐共存，产品有效，定价正确，执行正确，那么你就会一夜之间获得巨大的成功。

The likelihood of that happening before we get to the product and the pricing and the execution is very low because the sources of innovation, the sources of talent, and the sources of capital have a lot of, let’s say, friction among them as to what they think should be done.

在我们获得产品、定价和执行之前发生这种情况的可能性非常低，因为创新来源、人才来源和资本来源在他们认为应该做什么方面存在很多摩擦。

Contrast that to what Flagship set out to do, which is to have the innovation capacity, the human capacity to lead, and the capital — all as part of one entity, one organization, such that they are co-deployed in pursuit of something that is therefore slightly more risky in the eyes of others, because we can persist and we can cooperate because we all share one common objective, and that is the success of that thing that we’re creating.

与Flagship的目标形成鲜明对比的是，Flagship的目标是拥有创新能力、领导能力和资本——所有这些都作为一个实体、一个组织的一部分，这样它们就可以共同部署，以追求在其他人眼中风险稍大的目标，因为我们可以坚持、我们可以合作，因为我们都有一个共同的目标，那就是我们正在创造的东西的成功。

Creating a company having all three of those elements coming from the same source is a very different act than collecting and optimizing the pieces, has been my experience.

根据我的经验，创建一家拥有所有这三个要素来自同一来源的公司与收集和优化这些要素是完全不同的行为。

I’ve done both, obviously.

显然，我两者都做过。

For the first 13 years of my life — before 2000 — of my professional life, I did it the traditional way, and since then we’ve been doing it this way.

在我生命的前13年——2000年之前——我的职业生涯中，我以传统的方式做事，从那时起我们就一直这样做。

One of the things you do when you’re exploring novelty — in our case, novelty of our life-form, if you will, that is Flagship as an entity — is we’ve been pretty cautious and pretty humble about the notions that what we do can be scaled, and could be replicated, and can be effective regardless of scale.

当你探索新颖性时，你要做的一件事就是——在我们的例子中，我们的生命形式的新颖性，如果你愿意的话，那就是作为一个实体的旗舰——我们对我们所做的事情可以扩展、可以复制、无论规模如何都可以有效的观念非常谨慎和谦虚。

That is not something that we can easily defend.

这不是我们可以轻易捍卫的。

We’ve given it some time to ramp up, but your question more specifically, what’s rate limiting?

我们已经给了它一些时间来加速，但你的问题更具体地说，速率限制是什么？

It’s usually about people more so than capital and innovation since we’re sourcing a lot of capital, both to start these things but also to scale them.

通常更重要的是人，而不是资本和创新，因为我们正在采购大量资本，既是为了启动这些事情，也是为了扩大规模。

Some roughly $5 billion of capital has gone into our collective activities over the last decade, little more than a decade of it, just as we’ve ramped up.

过去十年（仅十余年），我们的集体活动投入了大约 50 亿美元的资本，而我们的规模也在不断扩大。

Then on the innovation side, our methodology by which we actually make inventions — which is quite different than the way scientific innovations are usually made — I don’t think that that is limited in its potential.

然后在创新方面，我们实际进行发明的方法 ——这与通常进行科学创新的方式有很大不同 ——我不认为这会限制其潜力。

There’s far more white space out there than there is occupied adjacencies, which is what innovation today is usually focused on.

那里的空白空间远远多于被占用的相邻区域，这正是当今创新通常关注的焦点。

One way of saying, I think it’s about people, and it’s people who, on the one hand, need to be trained in this way of thinking about it and be willing to dedicate themselves to a pretty contrarian way of life.

一种说法是，我认为这与人有关，一方面，人们需要接受这种思维方式的培训，并愿意致力于一种相当逆向的生活方式。

From a managerial standpoint, it’s a combination of being able to focus very rapidly on the task at hand, be able to make rapid decisions which requires a level of pre-alignment — alignment around how to do what we do, alignment around values — and then execution with rapid iteration.

从管理的角度来看，它是能够非常快速地专注于手头的任务、能够做出快速决策的结合，这需要一定程度的预先调整 ——围绕如何做我们所做的事情进行调整，围绕价值观调整 ——然后快速迭代执行。

All of those things are crucial to perform at that type of uncertainty and that type of pace.

所有这些对于在这种不确定性和这种节奏下执行至关重要。

Fortunately, in the Moderna case, they have nine years of upbringing before the pandemic that was filled with that culture, that set of principles.

幸运的是，就 Moderna 而言，他们在大流行之前有九年的成长经历，充满了这种文化和一套原则。

So, we were somewhat lucky in being poised to take on things that others would consider — well, first of all, they all considered it impossible, but that was not new to Moderna because Moderna has, for the last 10 years, heard that everything it’s doing is impossible, and then improbable, and then undesirable, and then .

所以，我们有点幸运，能够承担其他人认为的事情——嗯，首先，他们都认为这是不可能的，但这对 Moderna 来说并不新鲜，因为在过去 10 年里，Moderna 听说它所做的一切都是不可能的，然后是不可能的，然后是不可取的，然后是。

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Now, hopefully, we’ve at least shown that, in one case, it can be effective and impactful.

现在，希望我们至少已经证明，在一种情况下，它是有效且有影响力的。

And then that opens up a whole lot of new opportunities.

然后这就带来了很多新的机会。

In fact, there was very little doubt in any of our minds that we could go from the sequence to a vaccine in a short period of time.

事实上，我们所有人都毫不怀疑我们可以在短时间内从序列到疫苗。

We’ve done it many, many, many times before.

我们以前已经做过很多很多很多次了。

It’s just that that speed wasn’t needed or appreciated by anybody.

只是这种速度没有被任何人需要或欣赏。

Didn’t mean that we took three months before and now we did it in two days.

这并不是说我们以前花了三个月的时间，现在我们只用了两天就完成了。

It always can be done pretty quickly — that step, but the decision-making that preceded it was, were we willing to gear up to go into the clinic in a matter of weeks from having the starting point?

它总是可以很快完成——这一步，但之前的决策是，我们是否愿意在从起点开始的几周内做好准备进入临床？

That was the thing that I was mostly working with Stéphane and his senior leadership team on.

这就是我主要与 Stéphane 和他的高级领导团队合作的事情。

The scientific team that did the conversion of the sequence and optimization, frankly, did what they do for a living.

坦率地说，进行序列转换和优化的科学团队是为了谋生而做的。

I should point out, Tyler, what these people don’t yet realize is that mRNA, in addition to being unique in that it’s really the first broadly applied code molecule, information molecule that is used as a medicine and with all the advantages that come with information — digital versus analog — or where you actually have to do everything bespoke, the way drugs usually work.

泰勒，我应该指出的是，这些人还没有意识到，mRNA 除了是独一无二的，它确实是第一个广泛应用的代码分子、信息分子，被用作药物，并且具有信息带来的所有优势——“数字与模拟”——或者你实际上必须做所有定制的事情，就像药物通常的工作方式一样。

The other major advantage that it has is that it is something that is actually taking advantage of nature.

它的另一个主要优点是它实际上是在利用自然。

There was a lot of know-how we had going into this around how the process could be done.

关于如何完成这个过程，我们有很多专业知识。

In fact, let me tell you the parallel that we used.

事实上，让我告诉你我们使用的相似之处。

We have a program in cancer vaccines.

我们有一个癌症疫苗计划。

You might say, “What does a cancer vaccine have to do with coronavirus?” The answer is the way we work with cancer vaccines is that we take a patient’s tumor, sequence it, obtain the information around all the different mutations in that tumor, then design de novo — completely nonexistent before — a set of peptides that contain those mutations, make the mRNA for them, and stick them into a lipid nanoparticle, and give it back to that patient in a matter of weeks.

你可能会说，“癌症疫苗与冠状病毒有什么关系？”答案是，我们研究癌症疫苗的方式是，我们获取患者的肿瘤，对其进行测序，获得该肿瘤中所有不同突变的信息，然后从头设计——之前完全不存在——一组包含这些突变的肽，为它们制造 mRNA，并将它们粘到脂质纳米颗粒中，并在几周内将其返回给患者。

That has been an ongoing — for a couple of years — clinical trial that we’re doing.

这是我们正在进行的“几年来”临床试验。

Well, guess what?

嗯，你猜怎么着？

For every one of those patients, we’re doing what we did for the virus, over and over and over again.

对于每一位患者，我们都在一遍又一遍地做我们为病毒所做的事情。

We get DNA sequence.

我们得到DNA序列。

We convert it into the antigenic part.

我们将其转化为抗原部分。

We make it into an RNA.

我们把它变成RNA。

We put it in a particle.

我们把它放在一个粒子中。

In an interesting way, we had interesting precedents that allowed us to move pretty quickly.

以一种有趣的方式，我们有有趣的先例，使我们能够快速行动。

That and the partnership we had with NIH, where, for the prior year, year and a half, we’d been actively working on a MERS vaccine, which is a close cousin to the SARS-CoV-2.

这以及我们与 NIH 的合作关系，在过去一年半的时间里，我们一直在积极研究 MERS 疫苗，它是 SARS-CoV-2 的近亲。

Therefore, we have specific knowledge — together with NIH and the NIAID, Dr. Fauci’s group — on the particular protein that we needed to go after.

因此，我们与 NIH 和 NIAID、Fauci 博士的团队一起，对我们需要追踪的特定蛋白质拥有特定的知识。

All of those contributed to being able to go very quickly.

所有这些都有助于我们能够快速前进。

On convergence in biotech

论生物技术的融合

We’ve come a long way.

我们已经走了很长一段路。

We know things about hundreds of millions of bacterial sequences that occupy our gut.

我们了解占据我们肠道的数亿个细菌序列。

We’ve learned that viruses occupy our body that we could use for therapy.

我们了解到，病毒占据了我们的身体，我们可以用它来进行治疗。

All these things.

所有这些事情。

It’s the expanded frontiers coupled with — and this is what I would say, at least, that’s where we come from — the willingness and the ability to leap.

这是不断扩大的疆界，再加上 ——至少我想说的是，这就是我们的来源 ——跨越的意愿和能力。

My belief is that we’ve reached a level of capital, confidence, commitment, community, whatever of those C-letter-starting words that it takes to get to a critical mass where people are willing to leap.

我的信念是，我们已经达到了资本、信心、承诺、社区的水平，无论那些以 C 字母开头的词是什么，都需要达到人们愿意跳跃的临界质量。

They’re not just incrementally doing “If A, then B, then B-prime, and then maybe C.” This sequential, incremental .

他们不只是逐步地做“如果A，然后B，然后B素数，然后也许C”。这是连续的、增量的。

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Then look at the permission to leap.

然后看是否允许跳跃。

The permission to leap is given either by confidence or need.

跳跃的许可要么是出于信心，要么是出于需要。

If you have a pandemic, you have permission and the need to leap.

如果你发生了大流行，你就得到了许可，也有跳跃的必要。

If you have serious diseases that you can truly cure through editing or gene therapy or whatever, you have an obligation.

如果你患有严重的疾病，可以通过编辑或基因疗法或其他方式真正治愈，你就有义务。

Those things are all converging, but yes, absolutely, capability.

这些东西都在趋同，但绝对是能力。

Those needs were there before.

这些需求以前就存在。

Now we have more and more capability.

现在我们的能力越来越强。

But I’ll tell you, 10 years from now, the capability we have will seem like 1 percent of the capability we will have.

但我告诉你，10年后，我们拥有的能力似乎只是我们将拥有的能力的1%。

I’m very sure of that.

我对此非常确定。

I think that the next step beyond that will be — and you could imagine we’re already working on it — we worked on CRISPR.

我认为除此之外的下一步将是 ——你可以想象我们已经在研究它了 ——我们研究了 CRISPR。

We were one of the founding groups that was involved in the formation of Editas, but we’re now moving on to gene writing and literally inserting words and sentences into the genome, not just spelling mistakes.

我们是参与 Editas 成立的创始团队之一，但我们现在正在转向基因写入，并将单词和句子逐字插入基因组中，而不仅仅是拼写错误。

If you think of CRISPR as a metaphoric CRISPR — the ability to do things with the genome, I think 15 years from now, we will see multiple rare genetic conditions that are addressed by and corrected by it during somebody’s life, as opposed to in the conception phase, which is all another ethical issue.

如果你将 CRISPR 视为隐喻的 CRISPR ——利用基因组做事的能力，我认为 15 年后，我们将看到多种罕见的遗传状况在某人的一生中得到解决和纠正，而不是在受孕阶段，这又是一个伦理问题。

I think that will be done.

我认为这将会完成。

It’ll be more precise.

会更精确。

It’ll be more pervasive.

它将更加普遍。

But I think there’ll be plenty of other ways that will compete, by the way, with the end result, which often is, “I need a corrected form of a protein.

但我认为还有很多其他方法可以与最终结果竞争，最终结果通常是，“我需要一种正确的蛋白质形式。

I don’t really care if I get it from my DNA being altered, or I get a virus that can safely coexist with my cells so that it keeps making what I need.” Or RNA .

我真的不在乎我是否从被改变的 DNA 中感染了病毒，或者我感染了一种可以与我的细胞安全共存的病毒，以便它不断制造我需要的东西。”或 RNA。

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One of the things that we’ve got to realize is that in this field, it’s not winner take all, at all.

我们必须意识到的一件事是，在这个领域，根本不是赢者通吃。

It takes too long.

时间太长了。

It takes too much money to then say, “and once I’ve done it, I own the field.” It’s different than the tech sector where the competition is around execution and .

如果说“一旦我做到了，我就拥有了这个领域”，这需要太多的钱。这与科技行业不同，科技行业的竞争围绕执行力展开。

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Here, I think there could be multiple approaches that can be taken forward and are being taken forward, and they’ll all exist.

在这里，我认为可能有多种可以采取和正在采取的方法，而且它们都会存在。

I think those programs are probably several years — two, three, four years — in clinical development, still going on because you’ve got to make sure you can show an adequate number of people a treatment effect.

我认为这些项目可能需要几年的时间——“两年、三年、四年”——的临床开发，仍在进行中，因为你必须确保能够向足够数量的人展示治疗效果。

I think, especially now that the platform is even further blown out and established, we’ll be able to pursue not one of these but 10, 20 of these, and let’s see which one makes progress more quickly.

我想，特别是现在这个平台更加成熟了，我们能追求的不是一个，而是十个、二十个，看看哪个进展更快。

Look, the scientific method, the scientific community — it works on advances that are predicated on current and prior advances.

看，科学方法、科学界——它致力于以当前和先前的进展为基础的进步。

Incremental advances are the coin of the realm.

增量进步是这个领域的硬币。

It’s not that they’re conservative.

这并不是说他们保守。

It’s just that the process, the communal process of accepting truth as that which can’t be negated, causes you to therefore be, in every which way, questioning everything.

只是这个过程，接受真理为不可否定的共同过程，导致你以各种方式质疑一切。

I learned long ago the expression organized skepticism.

我很久以前就知道了“有组织的怀疑”这个表达方式。

That’s what science is predicated on.

这就是科学的基础。

As a result, if you come forward with something that is not fully supported by and connected to the current reality, people don’t know what to do with it.

因此，如果你提出的东西没有得到当前现实的完全支持和联系，人们不知道该怎么办。

What many academic scientists do is to spend the next 5, 10 years putting the connections in place to make what’s being proposed a natural extension of what existed before.

许多学术科学家所做的就是在接下来的 5 到 10 年里建立联系，使所提出的内容成为以前存在的内容的自然延伸。

In industry, we don’t have that need, and the reason Moderna was able to really be the pioneer in the space of establishing a therapeutic platform, even before a vaccine platform, is because for us, the lack of connection between what we were able to do and what had been done before was marginally interesting, but we weren’t trying to publish it.

在工业界，我们没有这种需求，Moderna 之所以能够真正成为建立治疗平台领域的先驱，甚至在疫苗平台之前，是因为对我们来说，我们能够做的事情和之前所做的事情之间缺乏联系，这有点有趣，但我们并没有试图发布它。

When you patent something, you don’t have to show that it’s a natural extension of what people did.

当你为某件事申请专利时，你不必证明它是人们所做的事情的自然延伸。

You just have to describe something that is novel, that is unobvious.

你只需要描述一些新颖的、不明显的东西。

In fact, the less connected, the more unobvious, and/or the less connectible.

事实上，联系越少，就越不明显，和/或联系越少。

My answer to your question would be, a lot of it has to do with the essence of academic, scientific pursuit of knowledge, which causes this collectivism, and it has its disadvantages.

我对你的问题的回答是，这很大程度上与学术、科学追求知识的本质有关，这导致了这种集体主义，它有其缺点。

One of them is, if you don’t have all the pieces together, people will be skeptical.

其中之一是，如果你没有把所有的部分整合在一起，人们就会持怀疑态度。

I hope that the illustration that a vaccine developed in a short period of time with robust, at least early, results, hopefully making an impact on the population, should give people a use case from which to think that this is not some artisanal activity that you need a PhD in molecular biology to be able to understand, but rather, a set of new tools, the equivalent of a computing infrastructure for other sectors that has been put together.

我希望这种疫苗在短时间内开发出来，并取得强有力的（至少是早期的）结果，有望对人群产生影响的例证，应该给人们一个用例，让人们认为这不是一些需要分子生物学博士学位才​​能理解的手工活动，而是一套新工具，相当于已经放在一起的其他部门的计算基础设施。

It may not look like a computer, but the assemblage of processing techniques and knowledge gathering and storing techniques — somewhat digital, somewhat analog — has created a capability — that’s what we call these platforms — has created a set of platforms from which we can expect not just slightly better cures and slightly better treatments, but pretty dramatic departures, not once or twice, but over and over and over again.

它可能看起来不像一台计算机，但处理技术和知识收集和存储技术的组合 —— 有些数字化，有些模拟 —— 创造了一种能力 —— 这就是我们所说的这些平台 —— 创建了一组平台，我们不仅可以期望稍微更好的治疗和稍微更好的治疗，而且可以期待相当戏剧性的偏离，不是一次或两次，而是一遍又一遍。

I think society — if that begins to be understood, then biomedical funding should be thought of as an enabler of the underlying science needed to keep making this happen.

我认为社会 ——如果人们开始理解这一点，那么生物医学资助应该被视为持续实现这一目标所需的基础科学的推动者。

So I want to make a strong case for what others call basic research, which I’d rather call enabling research because inevitably, basic research is enabling to something.

因此，我想为其他人所说的基础研究提供强有力的理由，我宁愿将其称为赋能研究，因为基础研究不可避免地会促成某些事情。

In a weird way, sometimes academic research frames things as having no purpose whatsoever, so that they could keep the purity of it, but actually, they can’t even assure that because eventually somebody will come along and use that for good.

以一种奇怪的方式，有时学术研究将事物框定为没有任何目的，以便他们可以保持它的纯粹性，但实际上，他们甚至不能保证这一点，因为最终有人会出现并利用它来做善事。

I think all of it is for good.

我认为这一切都是为了好的。

Enabling research — I understand it can be bad uses of science, by the way.

促进研究 ——顺便说一句，我知道这可能是对科学的不良利用。

Parenthetically, I’m not naïve, but we’re talking about biomedical now.

顺便说一句，我并不天真，但我们现在谈论的是生物医学。

I think that enabling research, followed by applied research, where you do translational work — it’s just not about more money.

我认为，先进行研究，然后进行应用研究，然后进行转化工作 ——这并不是为了更多的钱。

It’s about being able to invest in the areas where we’re able to have impact, and then create the conditions for future impact in the other areas.

这是关于能够在我们能够产生影响的领域进行投资，然后为未来在其他领域产生影响创造条件。

I would say, in and of itself, that the HHMI, that the Broad or the various cancer institutes that exist, have done some amazing things.

我想说，就其本身而言，HHMI、Broad 或现有的各种癌症研究所已经做了一些令人惊奇的事情。

The Wellcome Trust.

威康信托基金会。

It’s a function of their systematic thinking about the job at hand.

这是他们对手头工作进行系统思考的结果。

That’s one.

这是一个。

Then, of course, it’s about leadership.

当然，这与领导力有关。

It’s about the patience inherent in the money.

这是关于金钱固有的耐心。

Let me say maybe something stark, which we at Flagship believe and embody, but may be stark in the context of saying it, which is that we have to be willing to embrace unreasonable propositions and unreasonable people in order to make extraordinary findings because the notion that utterly reasonable people doing utterly reasonable things will produce massive breakthroughs doesn’t compute to me.

让我说也许是一些鲜明的观点，我们旗舰公司相信并体现了这一点，但在说这句话的背景下可能是鲜明的，那就是我们必须愿意接受不合理的主张和不合理的人才能做出非凡的发现，因为完全合理的人做完全合理的事情会产生巨大突破的观念对我来说是不计算的。

Yes, they can.

是的，他们可以。

There’s also such a thing as a lottery.

还有一种抽奖之类的东西。

Every week, somebody will win $100 million, but the notion that we should go searching for extraordinary advances amidst what is otherwise pretty reasonable things, each connected to each other by short distances — we need to allow for leaps to coexist with the hard work of filling in the gaps.

每个星期，都会有人赢得 1 亿美元，但我们应该在原本相当合理的事情中寻找非凡的进步，而每件事都通过短距离相互联系 ——我们需要允许飞跃与填补空白的艰苦工作共存。

I think that those places you talked about — HHMI enables a very few, but importantly, professors to have capital to do whatever they want to do, and that’s, guess what?

我认为你谈到的那些地方 — HHMI 使极少数但重要的是教授能够有资本做他们想做的任何事情，那就是，你猜怎么着？

That’s a leaping ability, permission to leap, maybe in a military way.

这是一种跳跃能力，允许跳跃，也许是一种军事方式。

Then, at Broad, a lot of the money that Eli Broad gave, and the rest of it that has been assembled, has been deployed to doing things that are scientifically with merit, but merit, I would say, not as dogmatically asserted as one would need if it was going to go through a whole funding process.

然后，在布罗德，伊莱·布罗德捐出的大量资金以及已经筹集到的其余资金，都被用于做那些在科学上有价值的事情，但我想说的是，价值并不像要经历整个融资过程时所需要的那样教条地断言。

So I’d say, encourage leaps, create a culture where leaps are not only permitted, but they’re encouraged and they’re protected, so that if it doesn’t work out, that people celebrate that at some level.

所以我想说，鼓励飞跃，创造一种文化，在这种文化中，飞跃不仅被允许，而且被鼓励并受到保护，这样，如果它不成功，人们会在某种程度上庆祝。

And then have a systematic way to think about it so that there’s learning cycles that come with that.

然后有一个系统的方法来思考它，这样就有随之而来的学习周期。

The first thing is utmost care.

首先是最细心的照顾。

Second is in the right context.

其次是在正确的背景下。

We have the ability to express our views on policy in places where those are relevant — with government colleagues, with certain nonprofits that are focused on issues.

我们有能力在相关的地方表达我们对政策的看法——与政府同事、与某些关注问题的非营利组织。

But we have to be, as you said, careful about that because of the way in which the world is processing information on these things.

但正如您所说，我们必须对此保持谨慎，因为世界处理这些事物的信息的方式。

It’s not easy.

这并不容易。

It’s not an easy situation for any of us.

对于我们任何人来说，这都不是一件容易的事。

I think that Boston has its own culture.

我认为波士顿有自己的文化。

It’s beautifully filled with immigrants that constantly reconstitute that culture.

这里充满了不断重建这种文化的移民。

But at the same time, it has roots.

但同时，它也是有根源的。

It has a history that gives it, I’d say, a rootedness.

我想说，它的历史赋予了它根基。

You can’t live in Boston for a long period of time and not feel like you’re part of something that has been there.

你不可能在波士顿生活很长一段时间而不觉得自己是那里的一部分。

The beauty is there are institutions that are world class, and I think that all of those conditions helped the biotech ecosystem take hold.

美妙之处在于有世界级的机构，我认为所有这些条件都有助于生物技术生态系统的建立。

Frankly, there was no biotech or ecosystem when I started.

坦率地说，当我开始时，还没有生物技术或生态系统。

I remember in 1987, I started my first company, and I was quite young.

我记得1987年，我创办了第一家公司，当时我还很年轻。

I was 24 years old.

那年我24岁。

At the time, young people didn’t start any companies, and I was interviewed by Inc. Magazine.

当时年轻人还没有创办任何公司，我接受了《Inc.》杂志的采访。

I remember it distinctly.

我记得很清楚。

They pointed out that the office I was in was previously the office of a company that had failed, and how did I feel about that?

他们指出我所在的办公室以前是一家倒闭公司的办公室，我对此有何感想？

My response was that I did not think about whose office I was occupying.

我的回答是，我没有想过我在谁的办公室工作。

I thought about the office of then the most notable iconic — a non-biotech — but startup success in Boston, which was Lotus.

我想到了当时最著名的标志性企业——非生物技术企业——但在波士顿取得成功的初创公司莲花的办公室。

Lotus was just across the street from where I was.

莲花就在我所在的街对面。

I said, “I choose to look at that office as opposed to looking at who might’ve had a business card in my desk.”

我说：“我选择查看那间办公室，而不是查看谁可能在我的办公桌上有一张名片。”

That kind of forward-looking culture has developed, at least in Boston, because Boston, I think, is a place where you definitely can feel like anything’s possible.

这种前瞻性的文化已经发展起来，至少在波士顿，因为我认为，在波士顿，你绝对可以感觉到一切皆有可能。

You have world-class institutions that educate people and enable them to believe that.

你们拥有世界一流的机构来教育人们并使他们相信这一点。

Then, I think, what’s happened over the last 30 years — what’s really not appreciated — is that ecosystems aren’t designed or constructed.

然后，我认为，过去 30 年发生的事情 ——“真正不被重视的事情”——是生态系统不是被设计或建造的。

They emerge.

他们出现了。

They are a highly ecological concept, and in nature, you’ve really got to realize that many, many forces that apply to things through iterative cycles — it causes an emergent form.

它们是一个高度生态化的概念，在自然界中，你真的必须意识到，通过迭代循环作用于事物的很多很多力量 ——它会导致一种新的形式。

Either way, it’s a life form or a community form, and I think that’s the best way to understand Boston’s ecosystem.

无论哪种方式，它都是一种生命形式或社区形式，我认为这是了解波士顿生态系统的最佳方式。

So when people talk about reproducing the Boston ecosystem or, for that matter, Silicon Valley — more dispersed but similar kind of things — I think that’s very, very difficult because you’d have to reproduce the emergent trajectory.

因此，当人们谈论重现波士顿生态系统，或者就此而言，硅谷 ——“更分散但类似的事物”—— 我认为这非常非常困难，因为你必须重现新兴的轨迹。

That’s my view.

这是我的观点。

There’s people who publish books that say the opposite but .

有些人出版的书籍却提出了相反的说法，但是。

.

。

.

。

What’s less understood, maybe, is in the category of just how a product of the sequence of events an emerging ecosystem is.

也许人们不太了解的是，新兴生态系统到底是如何成为一系列事件的产物。

And I think what is appreciated is that this is a special moment for Boston-Cambridge and, really, the biomedical enterprise, the hospitals, the large pharma companies, the human talent that’s been attracted.

我认为值得赞赏的是，这对于波士顿-剑桥以及生物医药企业、医院、大型制药公司以及所吸引的人才来说都是一个特殊的时刻。

The key is going to be not how to necessarily preserve it in the way it is today, but how to make sure you don’t mess with the evolutionary experiment through policy.

关键不是如何一定要保持现在的样子，而是如何确保不会通过政策扰乱进化实验。

We work in this area, so I’m not saying this as a spectator.

我们在这个领域工作，所以我不是作为旁观者这么说。

I think in the 30 years I’ve been involved in biotech, where there was an initial excitement but ended up with Monsanto going down a genetic modification route, that the understanding of plants as living productive systems that can be harnessed to do things, including in climate, is just beginning.

我想，在我从事生物技术的 30 年里，最初我感到很兴奋，但最终孟山都走上了基因改造路线，对植物作为活的生产系统的理解，可以用来做一些事情，包括气候方面的事情，这才刚刚开始。

I think it’s got a lot of promise.

我认为它有很多希望。

There are refined things that Armenians make and eat, but I hate saying it — the meat and potatoes of the cuisine are these combined meat and vegetable dishes that are quite good.

亚美尼亚人做的和吃的东西都很精致，但我讨厌这么说——菜品中的肉和土豆就是这些荤素结合的菜肴，相当不错。

But I won’t profess extreme knowledge.

但我不会自称拥有极端的知识。

There’s a place called Phoenicia, for example, there that is quite good, but these are hybrid between Lebanese and Armenia.

例如，有一个叫腓尼基的地方，那里相当不错，但这些地方是黎巴嫩和亚美尼亚的混合体。

I just happen to like that.

我只是碰巧喜欢那样。

Canada had a period of time where there was a lot of infighting around language, around laws, around some of those concepts of self between a bilingual society.

加拿大曾经有一段时间，双语社会之间围绕语言、法律、一些自我概念存在很多内讧。

And I think that had some impact on Montreal’s vibrancy because there was a big exodus of companies.

我认为这对蒙特利尔的活力产生了一些影响，因为大量公司外流。

There was an influx of other ones.

还有其他人涌入。

I think a lot of that has largely passed now.

我认为现在大部分已经过去了。

I think Canada, in general, is itself, I’d say, underrated because it’s got a lot of potential, and it’s got very progressive values and maybe a little less at the edge the way the US is able to and willing to be, but that’s the choice they make.

我认为，总的来说，加拿大本身被低估了，因为它有很大的潜力，而且有非常进步的价值观，也许不像美国能够和愿意那样处于边缘，但这就是他们做出的选择。

That’s their culture, so that would be my answer.

那是他们的文化，所以这就是我的答案。

I enjoy classical music together with my wife, but I don’t have a particular piece or a particular hero in that regard.

我和我的妻子一起喜欢古典音乐，但在这方面我没有特定的作品或特定的英雄。

Obviously, the major names, but also, once in a while trying to find .

显然，主要名字，但也偶尔试图找到。

.

。

.

。

I’m very happy that the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which I support and I’ve been involved with, has a strong commitment to new artists and new classical music intermixed with the older ones.

我很高兴我支持并参与过的波士顿交响乐团对新艺术家以及新古典音乐与旧音乐的混合做出了坚定的承诺。

The notion was that at the centennial of the Armenian genocide, which was in 2015 — the commemoration — that we needed to look forward by looking back and expressing gratitude to the people who saved my grandparents, for example, back in 1915.

我们的想法是，在 2015 年亚美尼亚种族灭绝一百周年之际——“纪念活动”——我们需要回顾过去，并向那些拯救我祖父母的人们（例如 1915 年）表示感谢。

Instead of thanking them — because they were long gone — to step into the shoes of the people who are doing that today and give them the financial needs, the recognition, and all the rest.

与其感谢他们——“因为他们早已离开了”——不如站在今天正在做这件事的人的立场上，为他们提供财务需求、认可以及其他一切。

Aurora Humanitarian Initiative is a project that I’m quite proud of and involved with.

极光人道主义倡议是一个我非常自豪并参与其中的项目。

Now, what’s happened is that, unexpectedly, Armenia itself in the last few months has been thrust into a humanitarian disaster by virtue of a war that’s been going on with its neighbor.

现在，出人意料的是，亚美尼亚本身在过去几个月里由于与邻国的战争而陷入了人道主义灾难。

Fortunately, recently, they entered into a peace accord, but the resultant damage done to thousands and thousands of families, and tens of thousands of lives, is immense.

幸运的是，他们最近达成了和平协议，但由此给成千上万的家庭和成千上万的生命造成的损害是巨大的。

Now, what’s happened is that this Aurora Initiative that was a gift — from Armenians to the world to thank people in Africa, in Myanmar, and different places doing humanitarian work — has now focused some of its attention in providing help to the very same Armenians that a hundred years later are afflicted with this again.

现在，所发生的情况是，这一极光倡议是亚美尼亚人送给世界的一份礼物，以感谢非洲、缅甸和不同地方从事人道主义工作的人们，现在它的部分注意力集中在为一百年后再次遭受这种痛苦的亚美尼亚人提供帮助上。

The irony is painful, but I’m proud of our ability to contribute to a pretty dire situation.

讽刺是痛苦的，但我为我们有能力为一个相当严峻的局势做出贡献而感到自豪。

What I found was that some of the things that we were doing in Flagship, with the way we thought about the future-backwards approach — what’s the destination you want to reach and how do you get there — seems like a simple idea.

我发现，我们在 Flagship 中所做的一些事情，以及我们对未来向后方法的思考方式——“你想要到达的目的地是什么以及如何到达那里”——似乎是一个简单的想法。

Quite absent when you’re trying to react to people’s needs because people’s needs are here and now.

当你试图对人们的需求做出反应时，你会完全缺席，因为人们的需求就在此时此地。

They are not really forward-looking.

他们并不是真正具有前瞻性。

Education is meant to be something the government provides because its impact is slowly felt, but so is economic development, so is many things.

教育本来就是政府提供的东西，因为它的影响是慢慢感受到的，但经济发展也是如此，很多事情也是如此。

I’d say that the crossover has been in terms of the relationship with the future.

我想说的是，交叉是与未来的关系方面的。

For example, in the philanthropy work that we’ve done — in particular with respect to developing Armenia, which has been going on for 20 years now — I’ve decided that our star customer is a five-year-old today.

例如，在我们所做的慈善工作中 ——尤其是在发展亚美尼亚方面，已经持续了20年了—— 我确定我们的明星客户今天是一个五岁的孩子。

I say “five-year-old” to make it concrete, but basically, somebody that can neither vote nor can express what they wish the future looks like, but for whom we want to try to create a more reasonable life and a more safe existence and sustained existence.

我说“五岁”是为了让它具体化，但基本上，一个既不能投票也不能表达他们希望未来是什么样子的人，但我们想为他们创造一种更合理的生活、更安全的存在和持续的存在。

In terms of that, that’s not that different than a startup, where you often can’t describe your customer, but it’s somebody that will, at some point, need an injection into their body to make a vaccine that might save their lives.

就这一点而言，这与初创公司没有什么不同，在初创公司中，你通常无法描述你的客户，但在某些时候，这个人需要注射到他们的身体中来制造可能挽救他们生命的疫苗。

Nevertheless, describing its future backwards and being anchored in the future, as opposed to anchor it only in the present or the past — that thinking does affect very much the philanthropy that I’ve been involved with.

尽管如此，向后描述未来并锚定于未来，而不是仅锚定于现在或过去——这种思维确实对我所参与的慈善事业产生了很大影响。

I think of longevity as a result.

我认为结果就是长寿。

I think that if we can deliver on health security, that is, getting people — most of their lives — to be defended in terms of their health versus treated with their diseases, chances are the result of that will be longer and longer lives, but also longer, healthier lives and presumptively happier lives.

我认为，如果我们能够实现健康安全，也就是说，让人们“在生命的大部分时间”得到健康保护，而不是接受疾病治疗，那么结果很可能会越来越长，而且寿命会更长、更健康，并且生活可能会更幸福。

The notion that we can come up with disease treatments that keep people alive, but are largely just fighting the disease with all the damage that it’s already done — that to me is the less desirable future vision.

我们可以提出让人们活下去的疾病治疗方法，但很大程度上只是用它已经造成的所有损害来对抗疾病——对我来说，这是不太理想的未来愿景。

I think if I just use that yardstick to go forward, that level of both increased knowledge about the pathophysiology, coupled with increased tools to address it with, I may be being too conservative, but I’d say over the next 5, 10 years, proof points — clear proof points — that that’s within reach should emerge.

我认为，如果我只是用这个标准来前进，增加有关病理生理学的知识，再加上解决这个问题的工具的增加，我可能太保守了，但我想说，在接下来的 5 年、10 年里，证据点 — 明确的证据点 — 应该会出现。

It’s not the case that ethical issues come up rarely.

道德问题并非很少出现。

They come up a lot.

他们出现了很多。

What I do is try to get as many people of different backgrounds and mindsets to talk about it and get external input, but also internal — we’re lucky to have a pretty diverse set of folks who have points of view about things — and try to arrive at at least a thesis, but be open minded to revisit it as data emerges.

我所做的就是尝试让尽可能多的不同背景和心态的人来讨论它并获得外部输入，同时也获得内部输入——“我们很幸运，拥有一群对事物有不同观点的人”——并尝试至少得出一篇论文，但要保持开放的心态，在数据出现时重新审视它。

I’ve long practiced — maybe it’s out of my ignorance — the notion that many things there may not be a definite answer for, but you need an answer in order to persist, to come up with a better answer.

我长期以来一直实践着“也许是因为我的无知”，很多事情可能没有一个明确的答案，但你需要一个答案才能坚持，才能得出更好的答案。

And it may be the opposite answer.

这可能是相反的答案。

You’re not done answering it, but you still need to proceed.

你还没有回答完，但你仍然需要继续。

Of course, there are things in the ethical realm that are pretty crystal clear, but the more interesting things are not.

当然，道德领域的一些事情是非常清楚的，但更有趣的事情却不是。

They need to be discussed and iterated.

它们需要被讨论和迭代。

But it turns out that a lot of the seeming societal stability that I thought we lived within in the decade that I lived there or so was a surface on a volatile situation.

但事实证明，在我住在那里的十年左右的时间里，我认为我们生活在其中的许多表面上的社会稳定实际上是不稳定局势的表面。

I think that what happened in the Middle East basically led to displacement of population, some of which came to Lebanon.

我认为中东发生的事情基本上导致了人口流离失所，其中一些人来到了黎巴嫩。

Of course, there was a large Palestinian contingent there that was looking for the world to help it and administer its fate, or help it with its fate after the wars that took place.

当然，那里有一支庞大的巴勒斯坦队伍，他们正在寻求世界的帮助并管理其命运，或者在战争发生后帮助其命运。

So it was an unstable place that, clearly, the way it was put together in a post–World War I, and the way the governance was decided upon — there were very forward-looking things done, but actually, they did not prove stable.

因此，这是一个不稳定的地方，很明显，它在第一次世界大战后的组建方式以及治理决策的方式——做了非常有前瞻性的事情，但实际上，它们并没有被证明是稳定的。

That plus it used to be the financial capital of the region.

再加上它曾经是该地区的金融首都。

Once you have a civil war — a protracted one at that — then that’s a fleeting advantage in that it moved to other places like Dubai.

一旦发生内战——一场旷日持久的内战，那么这种优势就会转瞬即逝，因为它会转移到迪拜等其他地方。

What single thing contributes to it?

哪一件事促成了它？

It’s easier for me to answer how Lebanon has endured despite those things, which is an incomparable degree of optimism about things getting better.

对我来说，更容易回答黎巴嫩是如何忍受这些事情的，这是对事情变得更好的无比乐观的程度。

It’s really genetic in that country, I think.

我认为这在那个国家确实是遗传的。

To some extent, probably, it’s what makes them survive.

在某种程度上，这可能是他们生存的原因。

It’s what might also condemn them to go back there because they may not spend as much time trying to address the underlying conflicts and underlying incompatibilities to so many different factions trying to coexist there as one would like in order to maybe trade off the short-term optimism for a long-term durability.

这也可能迫使他们回到那里，因为他们可能不会花那么多时间试图解决试图在那里共存的许多不同派系的潜在冲突和潜在不相容性，以便可能用短期乐观来换取长期持久性。

As an outsider, I haven’t lived there for some 45 years, but I view Lebanon in the context of the prism of Armenia, which has, in some ways, similar problems, in that we have a rather optimistic population despite the setbacks.

作为一个局外人，我已经在那里生活了大约 45 年，但我以亚美尼亚的视角来看待黎巴嫩，亚美尼亚在某些方面也存在类似的问题，因为尽管遇到了挫折，但我们的人口仍然相当乐观。

You’ve got to ask yourself, is the optimism sometimes hurting you or helping you?

你必须问自己，乐观有时会伤害你还是帮助你？

Sometimes it can hurt you if it makes you accept the next illusion or the next fiction, versus actually dealing with tough problems.

有时，如果它让你接受下一个幻想或下一个虚构，而不是实际处理棘手的问题，它可能会伤害你。

The world of innovation is very much one of toggling between survival and thriving.

创新的世界很大程度上是一个在生存和繁荣之间切换的世界。

I wish there was a word thrival.

我希望有一个词“繁荣”。

I haven’t quite managed to get that word in the dictionary, but that’s a good word.

我还没能在字典里查到这个词，但这是一个好词。

Between surviving and thriving, and this constant toggle between the two characterizes high-risk, daring startups, just like it does in a recovering population, where they’ve been afflicted with massive trauma, and they have to, on the one hand, survive, but on the other hand, not get trapped in the ghetto of just survival, and trying to escape it and try to thrive.

在生存和繁荣之间，这两者之间的不断切换是高风险、大胆的初创企业的特征，就像在正在康复的人群中一样，他们遭受了巨大的创伤，一方面，他们必须生存，但另一方面，不能陷入生存的贫民窟，并试图逃离它并试图蓬勃发展。

I think that’s probably where the life experiences have at least helped, but I cannot draw a connection because it was not conscious at all.

我认为这可能是生活经历至少有所帮助的地方，但我无法得出联系，因为它根本没有意识。

In that milieu, you need to create a culture where people are willing to say things and be wrong so that others can say other things, and over time, whatever is right can emerge.

在这种环境中，你需要创造一种文化，让人们愿意说一些话，也愿意犯错，这样其他人就可以说其他话，随着时间的推移，任何正确的事情都会出现。

So I’d say probably the most unusual thing that I insist on is people’s willingness to say things that are not backed up by all the facts that one would typically need, and then to engage them in a dialogue that will eventually get us there.

所以我想说，我坚持认为的最不寻常的事情可能是人们愿意说一些没有人们通常需要的所有事实支持的话，然后让他们参与一场对话，最终让我们达到目标。

It’s tiring.

这很累。

It’s not a pleasant activity, but I’ve developed a sense of that because I think that gets you to new truths, as opposed to repetitions of current dogma.

这不是一项令人愉快的活动，但我已经形成了一种感觉，因为我认为这会让你了解新的真理，而不是重复当前的教条。

I know there’s lots of people who want to create ethnic differences and all the differences among us, but there’s an element of this where I think people have come to this country fully intending to adapt and to contribute, but also to add of themselves to what is considered America today.

我知道有很多人想要制造种族差异以及我们之间的所有差异，但其中有一个因素是我认为人们来到这个国家完全是为了适应和做出贡献，同时也是为了将自己融入到今天的美国中。

I think that that cooperative system between the precedented and the new is what accounts for unimaginable creativity, resilience, resourcefulness that this country has.

我认为，这种先例与新的合作体系造就了这个国家难以想象的创造力、韧性和足智多谋。

I would protect that far greater than any monument or any other national treasure.

我会比保护任何纪念碑或任何其他国宝更强烈地保护它。

Personally, it may seem romantic, but that’s what I think is attractive about this country.

就我个人而言，这可能看起来很浪漫，但这就是我认为这个国家的吸引力所在。

This country has that as a core advantage.

这个国家拥有这一核心优势。

I think that’s a tough thing to pull off, let me tell you.

我认为这是一件很难实现的事情，让我告诉你。

A lot of other countries that come and go, and civilizations who don’t have that, who become a bit more homogeneous, more exclusionary lose their — I’ll say it — evolutionary advantage, their competitive advantage to adapt and to respond.

许多其他来来去去的国家，以及不具备这种能力的文明，变得更加同质化、更加排斥，失去了他们的“——我会这么说——”进化优势，他们适应和应对的竞争优势。

I think we clearly have a bunch of things to fix as it relates to the way the governance of the country is being executed.

我认为我们显然有很多事情需要解决，因为这关系到国家治理的执行方式。

There’s a level of overmaturation of that and overstagnation of that that seems very, very troubling.

有一定程度的过度成熟和过度停滞，这似乎非常非常令人不安。

I don’t know how that gets changed.

我不知道这会如何改变。

It’s beyond my experience base, but I would say whatever happens should .

这超出了我的经验基础，但我想说无论发生什么都应该。

.

。

.

。

I have not said should protect immigrants or immigration, but should protect this dynamism that comes from that.

我没有说应该保护移民或移民，但应该保护由此产生的这种活力。

I also would say that as a country, there’s so many people who have the experience of coming here, that that experience can also be transmitted to people who are born here, for whom the same mindset of being willing to imagine a better .

我还想说，作为一个国家，有很多人有来到这里的经历，这种经历也可以传递给出生在这里的人们，对他们来说，同样愿意想象更好的心态。

.

。

.

。

If you look, every single person who comes to this country imagines a better future for themselves.

如果你仔细观察，就会发现每个来到这个国家的人都为自己想象着更美好的未来。

That’s my belief.

这就是我的信念。

Maybe not every single person — 99 percent.

也许不是每个人 ——99%。

Imagine if all of us were also born imagining a better future for ourselves.

想象一下，如果我们所有人都生来就想象着自己更美好的未来。

Well, we should be, but we’ve got to work to get that.

嗯，我们应该这样做，但我们必须努力做到这一点。

An immigrant who comes here understands that they’ve got to work to get that.

来到这里的移民明白他们必须努力才能实现这一点。

They have to adapt.

他们必须适应。

The problem is, if you’re born here, you may not actually think that you’ve got to work to get that.

问题是，如果你出生在这里，你可能实际上并不认为你必须工作才能实现这一目标。

You might think you’re born into it.

你可能认为你生来就是这样的。

This will be a funny thing to say, and I apologize to anybody that I offend.

这将是一件有趣的事情，我向任何冒犯我的人道歉。

If we were all Americans by choice, we’d have a better America because Americans by choice, of which I’m one, actually have a stronger commitment to whatever it takes to make America be the place I chose to be, versus not thinking about that as a core responsibility.

如果我们都是自愿选择的美国人，我们就会拥有一个更好的美国，因为自愿选择的美国人（我就是其中之一）实际上更加坚定地致力于不惜一切代价使美国成为我选择的地方，而不是将其视为核心责任。

I think there’s some things to be said about that, is to really make a new pact, a compact to say, “What’s the America that I really want to be contributing to?” If that’s more equal, less discriminating, different rules and laws, et cetera, then we should be open to talk about those things.

我认为对此有一些话要说，就是要真正制定一项新的协议，一个契约，说“我真正想为美国做出什么贡献？”如果这是更平等、更少歧视、不同的规则和法律等等，那么我们应该开放地谈论这些事情。