“Where can we find such a person?”
In a 2006 case he prepared about the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), HBS professor Bill Sahlman quotes HSCI cochairman and codirector of science Douglas Melton as Melton pondered the management skills HSCI was looking for in its search for its first CEO. “That person would have to help navigate through a host of issues including dealing effectively with all the pieces of the Harvard puzzle, from the president to the provost to the people who run the hospitals,” Melton noted. “He or she would have to know how to tackle the difficult intellectual property issues that we are sure to face. Also on the agenda would be managing internal and external communications, including dealing with the press and public about the controversies surrounding our work. And the person would have to run the administrative side to make sure we are running efficiently and effectively…and make HSCI a model for managing a complex organization. Where can we find such a person?”
It turns out that an HBS graduate filled the bill. Brock Reeve (MBA ’88), a nonscientist, was hired in 2006 as HSCI’s executive director in large measure because of his broad experience in IT, health care, and life sciences gained through management positions in strategy, marketing, and other areas he has held with firms such as Life Science Insights, SRI Consulting, Viant, and IBM.
Asked the difference between managing a science-based firm and a nonscience firm, Reeve says, “A science-based firm must understand where the whole technology landscape is going, how related firms are progressing, and how its work fits into that context.” He also cites public policy issues and government involvement; intellectual property questions; longer time horizons; and different organizational structure and behavior components as setting science-based firms apart from other companies.
Reeve’s charge at HSCI is not unlike that facing other organizations, be they private-sector firms or university laboratories, working at the nexus of science and commerce. “HSCI was created as a virtual company cutting across existing organizations and seeking to create a new business model for how to do early-stage R&D,” Reeve explains. “In addition to the science and a host of other issues, the real challenge is, How do you create a virtual company, with a sense of mission and purpose, with people who exist in different organizations, and who have different organizational commitments and alliances?” It is just one of the many new breed of science/business management questions on which HBS will increasingly focus.
