Oral history interview with Dennis Gillings, June 10, 1999

Dennis Gillings is the chairman and chief executive officer of Quintiles Transnational Corporation, a company specializing in consulting for the pharmaceutical agency. In this interview, he describes the decision, made when he held a professorship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to apply his training as a scientist in the corporate world. Gillings left academia after his corporation's growth seemed secure. He shares his common-sense driven business philosophy, which, despite its lack of nuance, appears to have served him very well.