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I'm Allison Beard.

I'm here today with J Craig Venter,

the biologist and genetics pioneer best known

for leading the effort to sequence human DNA.

He now oversees an institute and two biotech firms. Dr.

Ventor, thanks so much for joining me today.

Nice talking to you.

You're known for setting audacious goals and then achieving them more quickly than most would.

Why do you think that approach has been so effective for you?

Well they're only considered audacious by other people.

I've never considered them audacious goals.

And I considered them achievable.

And I take pride in doing what we announced that we're going to do when achieving these goals.

So they only seem, I guess, audacious by comparison to where people are in their existing field.

So with the human genome, it was only because it was set up, it was going to be a 15 five billion dollar program that it seemed

incontiable to somebody that a small group could do it in less than a year for a tiny fraction of that amount of money, right?

And I think that's the key thing is believing not false beliefs, but believing that the goals that you're setting are reasonable.

And in my case I've had extraordinary teams

that have made the goals achievable.

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