Richard Scheller (Genentech) - Developing Products that Save Lives

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Journey, Startups, Education, Stanford, Culture, Strategy, Stanford University, Entrepreneurship, Business, Life Lessons, Thought Leadership, Creativity, Etl, Challenges, Leadership, Innovation, Founders

4.4 • 739 Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2011

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As Genentech's Executive Vice President of Research and Early Development, Richard Scheller leads scientists discovering medicines that will significantly impact the lives of patients. In this candid interview, he describes the challenges of his industry, and outlines the required steps for developing products in a heavily regulated environment. Scheller also shares some personal learning curves faced when he elected to leave academic life for a new role in a commercial enterprise.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, brought to you weekly
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0:32.6	It is my very special privilege to welcome our guest today.
0:36.6	Richard Scheller is the head of R&D at Genentech.
0:39.3	But I have known him for a very long time, although he doesn't actually remember it.
0:44.3	He started at Stanford as a faculty member in 1982, in the neuroscience department and in biology.
0:53.3	And that was the year that I was a first-year PhD student over there.
0:56.4	So I took classes from him, and it's absolutely amazing to see the trajectory of his career.
1:01.3	He spent 19 years at Stanford, and then went to Genentech.
1:04.3	He's been there 10 years.
1:05.7	And he's got some incredible insights about the difference between research in academia and in industry, and we're going
1:11.5	to dive right in. So welcome. Thank you very much for joining us. And maybe you could tell
1:17.1	us a little bit about your story and about moving from academia. You know, what would
1:20.7	motivate you? And tell us a little bit about how that happened. Okay, I'm going to stand
1:24.9	up if that's okay. Thanks for having me. I was a professor here for 19 years. I was successful, a member of the National Academy. I was a Hughes investigator, so I had plenty of money. Things were going well. But the research that I was doing had gone through a phase where the knowledge had just exploded over the last decade.
1:50.0	And the rate of learning started to sort of plateau a little bit.
	...

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