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norm. “In my discussions with a range of graduate students at other
places, they often describe their research advisers as control freaks—
which is understandable, because their lab is their baby,” said Laura,
who has a PhD in neuroscience from MIT. “They may want to man-
age every part of the research. It’s very hard for them to let their stu-
dents explore and make mistakes. But not giving people the room to
figure things out themselves can stifle them or train them to not take
potentially innovative risks.”
Langer nodded in agreement. Under his leadership, everyone is
involved in offering ideas for projects and choosing which ones to
pursue. “It’s a team effort,” he said. “It’s empowering people; it’s
letting everybody feel they are valued and that it’s OK to suggest
things.” This stands in contrast to most academic and corporate labs,
where the director selects the projects.
Current and former lab members told me that Langer exposes
people to possibilities and lets them decide what to work on. Gordana
Vunjak-Novakovic, a professor of biomedical engineering and med-
ical sciences at Columbia who worked at the lab in the 1980s and
1990s, says she took that lesson to heart and runs her 40-person lab
the same way: “I never tell people what to do but, rather, help them
see the possibilities, let them really get excited about one of them,
and let them work on their own ideas.” Many if not most of Langer’s
postdocs and research scientists and at least some of the doctoral
students are working on several projects. (For a fuller picture of life
in Langer Lab, see the profile of two postdocs in the online version
of this article, at HBR.org.)
Langer treats Jaklenec and Traverso as coprincipal investigators—
another departure from the norm. Power is distributed throughout
the lab, accumulated on the basis of people’s ideas and initiative and
the funding that their research attracts. Langer gives researchers—
especially graduate students—lots of guidance in the beginning,
to make sure that they get off to a good start and that projects are
optimally structured. He also helps decide which options are consid-
ered. For example, at the outset of the project to develop the drug-
delivery device that would stay in the stomach for a long period, he
and Traverso decided to explore two possibilities: one that would

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