Can Operation Warp Speed Serve as a Model for Accelerating Innovations Beyond COVID Vaccines?
Operation Warp Speed (OWS) was a U.S. government-led program to accelerate the development, production, and administration of COVID-19 vaccines. The program cut the typical ten-year timeline needed to develop a new vaccine down to ten months and began vaccinating vulnerable populations within a year after launch. OWS’s success has led to calls for a similar mission model to accelerate innovations addressing other pressing social needs, including a cure for Alzheimer’s disease or atmospheric-carbon removal to combat global warming. We provide a framework to understand which innovations call for a mission approach and apply economic principles to identify key design features that contributed to the success of OWS.
Published Versions
Forthcoming: Can Operation Warp Speed Serve as a Model for Accelerating Innovations Beyond COVID Vaccines?, Arielle D'Souza, Kendall Hoyt, Christopher M. Snyder, Alec Stapp. in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy, volume 4, Jones and Lerner. 2024