Authors:

  • Gary Pisano

Excerpt

September/October 2021, Paper: "On November 30, 2020, Moderna Therapeutics announced that Phase III clinical trials for its messenger RNA vaccine demonstrated 95% protective efficacy against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that had killed almost 1.5 million people worldwide in the previous 10 months. A relative upstart in the Covid-19 vaccine race and a company that few people had heard of before the pandemic, Moderna looked to be an overnight success. But as its CEO, Stéphane Bancel, has noted, that success was 10 years in the making. Far from a one-and-done stroke of luck, the vaccine was the product of a repeatable process that has been used countless times by the company from which Moderna emerged: Flagship Pioneering, a venture-creation firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose mission is to conceive, make, and commercialize breakthrough innovations in previously unexplored domains of the life sciences."

Non-HKS Author Website - Gary Pisano