to lay some organizational groundwork. “I like to stretch,” he says.
So what has he observed in his crash course at IDRI, and how can he help put it on track to accomplish its goals of helping people live healthier lives in the developing world?
First, he says he wants to help the place develop more disciplined processes without wrecking its feisty, can-do culture. “This is a very compelling place. This is a classic textbook story of a scrappy, smart startup, that’s founder-centric that has grown from 20 people a couple years ago to 80 today.”
Even though Davis considers himself a strategic thinker and team builder, rather than a “process guy,” he thinks the IDRI needs more processes. “When you have 80 people, you can’t have 80 people reporting to one guy,” he says.
Some key organizational holes need to be filled. He’s thinking of hiring a senior vice president for research and development, a human resources person, and another principal investigator in immunology. If he had his druthers, he’d like to bring in a skilled fund-raiser to work in the community, and a business development person to craft partnerships needed with biotech and pharmaceutical companies to commercialize their inventions.
Davis doesn’t foresee recruiting a permanent CEO right away, partly because he’s wary of bringing about too much change at one time. “There’s a lot of energy here, people doing good work, working on good projects. There’s great camaraderie, a scrappiness.” A strong leader of R&D could help preserve the culture, while setting priorities to focus hard on a few projects, without getting the organization spread too thin, he says.
When he’s wrapped up this temporary mission in the fall, Davis plans to look at other opportunities in Seattle. He wants to stay involved with IDRI, in some way. “This place has a lot of potential,” he says. “It’s premature to say what can eventually get through regulatory tunnels, whether it’s diagnostics or vaccine adjuvants. My hope is that we develop a strong enough institution to make that happen.”
