The Tolan Center for Healthcare Speaker Series: A Conversation with Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan

When asked about the future of AI in the industry, Vas described opportunities over short and longer-term horizons. He offered a grounded view of AI’s role in healthcare, noting that while near-term disruption in key industry benchmarks may be modest, long-term gains could meaningfully accelerate the industry, including reducing the timeline from early discovery to patients, or increasing the probability of success for new medicines.

Some of our favorite advice Vas shared with MBA students:

• Embrace a broad career early on, with lateral moves to get experience. As humans, we’re not great at predicting what the world will look like in the future, but diverse experiences build comfort with being curious and allow you to adapt.
• Develop the ability to communicate with different audiences as a leader (e.g. scientists, financial analysts, politicians, and media).
• The hardest thing as a leader is learning when not to disregard the margin idea. You have to listen, trust your experts, and triage effectively. Most of the time, you’ll say “no”, but a few of these ideas might make a significant difference for both patients and the business.

Vas brings a distinctive perspective among leaders of major life sciences firms, drawing on his background as a medical doctor who rose through R&D to the CEO chair. He chairs the Novartis innovation board himself, pushing for fundamental advances in science. When asked about balancing humanitarian versus business interests in drug development, Vas emphasized mission-driven leadership: he’s in the business of reimagining medicine to deliver the best possible options for patients, not simply selling drugs.