Prith touched on some of the “secret sauce” ingredients, including a focus on sustainable innovation versus disruptive innovation. Another critical ingredient? Creating a specialized team that focuses on innovation, instead of adding the task of innovation to team members’ existing roles and responsibilities. Finally, Prith discussed the central idea of his book: Fostering continuous innovation by creating an open, collaborative environment that brings together companies, universities, research labs, and other partners to leverage the unique strengths of each stakeholder.

“Unleashing Innovation: The Case for Academia in Innovation” focused on Prith’s background in academia and some of the incredible innovations — including mRNA vaccine technologies — that have come from decades of university research and investment. Prith talked about how to form successful partnerships with academic institutions, as well as how universities are changing the ways in which they encourage, measure, and reward faculty innovations.

Prith sits down with Curt Chan, Josh Poley and Mary Kate Joyce, to talk about the fundamental idea of innovation: What does it actually mean? Is the term used too loosely? Prith shared an important qualifier: In order to be truly innovative, a new product or service needs to solve a problem and add value. Prith also discussed the difficult, disciplined process of writing, the authors who inspire him, and a modern innovation that he believes will be truly transformative: quantum computing.