By Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa & Liisa Välikangas

The need is now, but the solution takes over ten years. The race for speed is on, facilitated by billion-dollar fundraising and sustained investment in public-private partnerships. Accelerating COVID-19 vaccine development to “pandemic speed” has included many simultaneous projects, parallel clinical trials, fast-tracking experimental technology, and committing manufacturing capacity before regulatory approval.

But there are two ways to be fast: take more risks or learn together. So far we have been taking more risk. Risk is implied in accelerated clinical trials and early building of scale, as discussed next.

Eliminate Delays – parallel clinical trials and fast-track technology

As clinical trials normally take years, speed is gained by tightening the schedule and engaging in parallel phases. Such iterative rhythms are reminiscent of agile development in computing rather than of traditional drug development. So are the efforts to develop new technology one piece at a time, adding to the already existing platform as plug-and-play. The updated platforms can be fast-tracked through regulatory approval due to their modularity and repurposed.

Take Financial Risk – committing manufacturing capacity and scaling globally

Manufacturing capacity is already being built while clinical trials are ongoing. Such earlier than customary investment in manufacturing capacity implies much bigger financial risks, should the vaccine-in-trial fail.

Front Runners Started Early – Prior experience matters

So what about learning? In the previous coronavirus pandemics of SARS and MERS, the vaccines and antiviral drugs were not developed on time. Such failures led to calls for long-term investments in preparation to respond to future shocks. Indeed, global public-private partnerships have developed innovative financial instruments that are used  in COVID-19 vaccine development to sustain basic research in vaccine development. Pioneering companies are funded to develop new vaccine technology, but the learning is specific to these companies. Their speed gain comes from having started earlier and building on their experience.

Collectively learn–Leveraging knowledge globally

Speed comes with risk. This leads us to propose that societal and industry leaders, together with citizens, have not sufficiently considered the alternative: Collective learning, i.e. sharing knowledge that can be leveraged and combined with that of others. Such collective learning has been found important for radical innovation where incremental learning is too slow or local. It also makes resource use more efficient. Without joint learning, despite billions spent on R&D and manufacturing, vaccines may arrive too late if at all. Learning remains siloed for the next pandemic.

This call for collective learning may strike like a noble, yet perhaps a naïve idea, which will be fiercely opposed by intellectual property lawyers. Already now, scientists and innovators are constrained by industry ownership structures and limited in their right to share knowledge by their work contract. However, advances in knowledge sharing, while protecting that which address the private vs. public benefit equation, ought to be wisely exploited. For example, sharing particular research results, but not reasons of making the results strategic to a company, supports such balanced knowledge sharing.

We hear calls for collective learning from varied stakeholder groups, yet the action is still mainly about  racing through risk taking. Rather than in a field race for speed, we find ourselves living in a fish bowl: The current temporal dilemma is a good opportunity to learn to learn together.