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Leadership in a Complex, Technology-Driven World

Rosalind Williams HM Robert S. Langer Jr. SCD '74 Robert Metcalfe '68 Phillip A. Sharp: October 6, 2005; Running Time: 1:24:32

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

Sometimes the best way to achieve leadership is by pursuing a vision or meeting some personal goals, these three top-flight technologists suggest.

Robert Langer admits, “I don’t tend to think of myself as a leader. I have simple ideas; I just want to see if I can do some good, and get satisfaction out of that.” He counts himself lucky to have gotten a job at Harvard Medical School, which allowed him to apply engineering to medical problems. “I wanted to see if we could make things that might help improve people’s health.” He attributes some of his leadership learning to years of struggle in acquiring grant money—in one case a 17-year battle with the NIH to back a novel drug delivery system (for which Langer was awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2002).

Says Robert Metcalfe, “We have an idealization of innovative leadership—that it’s lovely. But the enemy is the status quo, and it’s resourceful and determined to defeat innovation.” Metcalfe’s personal style figures in his successes. He went to war against IBM in the 1980s, “when I had an invention that was better than what they had, and they threw all their monopoly resources against me. I was alone and surrounded and I beat them.” To make progress against the status quo, Metcalfe states, “you have to be obnoxious.”

Don’t forget schmoozing and team playing, reminds Nobel Laureate Phillip Sharp, who acquired much of his savvy moving through academic ranks at MIT and partnering with outside firms. “I like to set a goal – that I’d like to see this technology do that, or this scientific question answered.” While you must set goals and seize opportunities, he says, you also need to attract optimal talents to your environment and “get others to play the game.” These are skills, Sharp says, he learned in high school sports.

Lecture Details

Location: Wong Auditorium

About the Speakers

Rosalind Williams HM

The Robert M. Metcalfe Professor of Writing
Director, Program in Science, Technology and Society

Williams has published several books, including Retooling: A Historican Confronts Technological Change (MIT Press 2002). At MIT, she has served as Associate Chair of the MIT Faculty and as Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education.

Robert S. Langer Jr. SCD '74

Institute Professor and Kenneth J. Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering
2002 Draper Prize Award Recipient

Robert Langer has more than 500 issued or pending patents worldwide. In 2005, Langer received the $500,000 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, America's top prize in medicine. In 2002, he received the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers, from the National Academy of Engineering. Among numerous other awards Langer has received are the Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment (2003), the John Fritz Award (2003) (given previously to inventors such as Thomas Edison and Orville Wright) and the General Motors Kettering Award for Cancer Research (2004). Langer is one of very few people ever elected to all three U.S. National Academies and the youngest in history (age 43) ever to receive this distinction.

He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974, both in Chemical Engineering.

Robert Metcalfe '68

General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners Founder, 3Com Corporation

Robert Metcalfe developed Ethernet as a standard for connecting computers for high-speed data transfer. He joined Polaris Venture Partners in January 2001. Before that, Metcalfe was Publisher/CEO for IDG/InfoWorld. His weekly Internet columns for this publication have been collected in his latest book, Internet Collapses and Other InfoWorld Punditry. Metcalfe founded 3Com Corporation in 1979 and stayed with the billion-dollar company through 1990. Metcalfe received bachelor degrees in electrical engineering and management from MIT (1969), and an M.S. in applied mathematics and Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard University.

Phillip A. Sharp

Institute Professor
Founding Director McGovern Institute for Brain Research
Nobel Laureate in Medicine 1993

Phillip A. Sharp received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Much of Sharp’s scientific work has been conducted at MIT’s Center for Cancer Research, which he joined in 1974 and directed from 1985 to 1991. He subsequently led the Department of Biology from 1991 to 1999. Sharp is co-founder of Biogen, Inc and also co-founder of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals.

He earned a B.A. from Union College, KY, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1969.

Sharp has authored more than 300 scientific papers and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society. In 2006, he received the National Medal of Science.

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