00:00:00 Why are we doing the core values now? Because the company is growing up and the

00:00:28 track we've taken so far along the road has been the correct track. In other words, we've

00:00:33 had a commitment to research, a commitment to making new drugs, and as we get to the

00:00:38 point where we try to get into profitability, we need to make sure that we retain that commitment

00:00:44 for our future. I am in a peculiar situation in that I'm based in a subsidiary, but most

00:00:50 of the people that I work with day to day are actually not based here in the UK, they're

00:00:54 based in Cambridge and in San Diego. So for me it's extremely important to not only build

00:01:00 up relationships across disciplines, but also to establish a very close teamwork spirit

00:01:08 within the department as well as outside the department when you're working in more of

00:01:11 a core group on a programme or a project. And here there's so much of innovation and

00:01:17 some very hard cell biology which we overcome, some very nice medicinal chemistry work, and

00:01:25 some acid technology, instrumentation, all that brought in and started us thinking outside

00:01:33 the box and that's where we made major leaps in the project. Whereas here if I'm working

00:01:40 on one of the in-house programmes and I see something that can be improved, if I call

00:01:44 the research computing department, it can be by the end of the day they've implemented

00:01:49 the changes we've requested. Good fundamentals, very good science, always making decisions

00:01:56 that make sense and always continuing to push the envelope. I think people in this place

00:02:04 are special because you are treated as an individual and what you can bring to the team

00:02:10 and effort is valued, regardless of whether you are like one of my colleagues who washes

00:02:16 glassware most of the day. I think the people in the labs appreciate that they couldn't

00:02:20 do what they did if they didn't have clean glassware. And so we were able to make it

00:02:25 happen even though we didn't know exactly how we were going to do it, but we would never

00:02:30 have been able to do that if we didn't have the equipment, we didn't have the time, we

00:02:32 didn't have the support. And if we had to give this long road of exactly how we were

00:02:38 going to get to do this assay, we couldn't have done it. And to me, science is how do

00:02:42 we take our basic knowledge and convert that into something that actually makes a consequential

00:02:48 difference in people's lives. And the great extent we can approach that with a great degree

00:02:52 of passion really is going to help propel us forward in our success. A passion and almost

00:02:59 an unbridled passion for what they're doing, literally. Sometimes they will walk in and

00:03:04 there's an excitement, you can feel it in the air. They try to beat the industry. You

00:03:09 know, they stay ahead of the industry, not, okay, everybody's doing this. They're the

00:03:12 ones that companies, I feel like companies follow. Because when I go to a lot of my monthly

00:03:16 meetings with national stock plan administrators from all across the New England area, there

00:03:21 are things that we're doing here that they're thinking about. So that's something that I

00:03:26 really like. The questions and the willingness to look beyond what needs to be done, and

00:03:34 is quite impressive. I just came from a meeting that caused the whole group to think incredibly

00:03:43 outside the box, because we were forging off into an area that we have never tried before.

00:03:49 A lot of people work best when they're in their zone of proximal development. That is

00:03:55 when they're applying their craft, something they do very well, their expertise, in an

00:04:01 area that they're a little bit unfamiliar with. And that often is very, very fertile

00:04:05 grounds for innovation. I think on virtually all of the fronts that have affected the progress

00:04:12 of the project, innovation is a fundamental cornerstone. Sure, you can have innovative

00:04:17 people, but if you don't open the doors for them and allow them to innovate and encourage

00:04:22 them to innovate, it just won't happen. It never gets the critical mass to rise to that

00:04:27 next level. You know that everybody in the group and everybody in the building has got

00:04:31 the same aim, and they're all pulling in the same direction. The knowledge that working

00:04:34 in a team, you're going to be better off than working on your own. It's not innovation for

00:04:39 the sake of innovation, it's how can I come up with a new idea to make things better.

00:04:47 Vertex is dedicated to making the teams work together in a coherent fashion that is focused.

00:04:55 Unlike in many of the traditional pharmaceuticals, you have all the different functions represented

00:04:59 of working together towards one common goal and not just functionally disparate. So I

00:05:04 found that it's really working together with a shared vision of what we want to do to change

00:05:09 patients' lives that's really been a lot of fun to be a part of. The words that describe

00:05:14 Vertex when it was working at its best, that's how the core values came about. We always

00:05:19 try to be at the leading edge or examine ways of being there, and there's good communication

00:05:24 between groups such as enzymology, cell biology and chemistry when they're all working well

00:05:29 together, and finance for that matter, then we get more than the sum of the parts. Therefore

00:05:37 the core values of innovation and so on, we need to remind ourselves of them.