Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Dr. Kevin J. Tracey, president and C.E.O.of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research of the North Shore-LIJ Health System. He says, “Innovation has to start with creativity, and creativity means making something. The best way to make something, if you don’t know how to do it, is to take something else apart.”
Photo credit: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
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What were some early lessons for you?
I was 5 when my mother died of a brain tumor. It was very sudden and unexpected. My grandfather — her father — was a professor of pediatrics at Yale, where she died. I remember sitting on his knee and saying, “Why didn’t the neurosurgeon take the tumor out?” He said, “Well, the neurosurgeon couldn’t distinguish between the tumor tissue and the brain tissue, and if he had just taken out everything, she would have been left with serious brain damage.” I said, “Someone should do something about that.” That has been the driver in my life: to learn enough to make new therapies to help others.
What are some things you did during high school outside of your classes?
Although I loved learning science, I really loved working on cars. The first car I bought was a 1966 Mercury Comet, and I didn’t have the money to pay a mechanic. So my friends and I took the engine out of the car and took it apart and did a ring job and a valve job and put it back together.
Looking back on that, what I learned — and I use this every day — is that if you know how something works, and if you can take it apart and put it back together, then you understand it. Of course, I can’t fix my car today, and my mechanic needs a computer. But I do think that kids today are growing up with computers and technology that don’t need to be fixed or can’t be fixed, and they’re missing out on something. It’s very hard for kids today to find an experience of taking something apart and putting it back together.
But, just to play devil’s advocate, isn’t there just as much value in synthesis and connecting dots in this digital era?
It doesn’t have to be an engine block. But I think you have to take apart something. You can take apart a poem. You can take apart a Rubik’s Cube. You can take apart anything. It’s about being inquisitive, and I think progress comes from a combination of inquisitiveness and creativity. You have to have facts, and I use the Internet extensively for facts. But the Internet doesn’t tell me how something really works.
I also think you want to figure out how things work, because that gives you the power to innovate. Innovation has to start with creativity, and creativity means making something. The best way to make something, if you don’t know how to do it, is to take something else apart.
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Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.comthat he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here.
His more recent book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, was also also published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.