Normally, Brad Finneran and Len Tanaka wouldn’t have been sitting at a corner table in AllerGen’s small basement cafeteria, drinking coffee at 3:45 in the afternoon. Brad, AllerGen’s director of research, and Len, the biotech company’s senior scientist, were second and third in command, respectively. Normally, the two would have been in the labs, working.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2000 issue of Harvard Business Review.