Flagship’s Afeyan on the need for a paradigm shift away from shots-on-goal thinking

Flush with a freshly expanded $3.4 billion fund, Flagship’s Noubar Afeyan believes the rising problem of too much capital in the ecosystem can be solved by going after technologies with no precedent, and moving away from a model that assumes high failure rates, an attitude he says hounds industry.

Afeyan, founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, sees white space areas — where the firm has built its biggest successes — as opportunities to create new value pools, a model he prefers to competing in well-established but crowded spaces...