Invitae

It's impossible to distill our culture into three or four feel-good and non-controversial statements, but it is not impossible to describe what we aspire to:

• Team above the individual
• Radically honest communication
• Freedom with accountability
• Transparency and data-informed action
• A sense of urgency

INVITAE: A CULTURAL PRIMER

Invitae is a multidisciplinary company executing a novel business model in a highly technical, highly regulated, and overly complex industry against a backdrop of rapid and disruptive technological advancement. In order to execute our shared vision—to bring genetics into mainstream medicine to improve healthcare for billions of people on the planet—we must operate on an incredibly high level. Thriving in a world of ever-accelerating technology cycles and relentlessly increasing competition requires crisp execution, but also an ability to innovate at scale. This, innovation at scale, is a notoriously difficult problem, one that most traditional organizations routinely fail to solve.1 What typically happens, is a cycle that starts with an initial burst of innovation that is soon followed by the price of success in the form of ever-increasing organizational complexity. Widely adopted methods for taming organizational complexity make companies manageable and predictable, but also often leave them stagnant and vulnerable to disruption. At Invitae, we’re building an organization that can continuously innovate at scale. Equally importantly, we’re building a company where we love to work.

CULTURE AT INVITAE

The values informing how we operate can best be described as ‘culture.’ It’s a word bandied about by the leadership of just about every company in existence but rarely taken seriously as means to achieve the mission of the company. At Invitae, we view our work culture as both an important tool in achieving our goals and a true competitive advantage. Like most things in a rapidly growing company, culture at Invitae is a work in progress. We will continuously try some things that will work, and we will certainly try and abandon some things that don’t. Most importantly, we will constantly strive to maintain a differentiated culture and expect you to participate directly in doing so. We don’t claim to have all the answers, nor are we certain ‘how far is too far,’ but we do know this: great companies have strong cultures, and average companies have average cultures.

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What we do

• Challenge each other to perform at our highest level
• Speak directly and honestly
• Think about the needs of our team above our own
• Embrace failure as a learning experience
• Have wonderful disagreements to challenge the status quo
• Focus on freedom with accountability over policy

What we don't do

• Take the easy way out
• Avoid truthful communication because it feels uncomfortable
• Isolate ourselves from our team members
• Hide from failure or blame others
• Accept things as they are
• Micromanage our employees

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