[A2M] | Global talk | Open Source Vaccine Development: Practices, Opportunities, and Tensions
Tuesday, October 26th | 8:30 a.m. (UTC-5)
Milena Leybold
Konstantin Hodros
University of Innsbruck
Department for Organization and Learning
Organizing Creativity under Regulatory Uncertainty: Alternative Approaches to Intellectual Property
Research Paper by Konstantin Hondros & Milena Leybold
Vaccine research and development (R&D) and subsequent vaccine deployment is one of the center pieces of the global response against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In September 2021, the WHO vaccine tracker counted 297 vaccine candidates. The fast development process, the novelty of the technology employed, and the high efficacy of some of the pioneer vaccines (e.g., the mRNA vaccine Cormitrary) exceeded the expectations of health officials, scientists, and the public. Contrasting this success story of innovation achieved by the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, global accessibility to and sustainability of manufacturing and deploying vaccines is still an unsolved issue: large parts of the global population are still undersupplied and dependent on donations of Western countries.
Critics of some industry standards question whether rigid IP protection of vaccine-related knowledge is helpful to create accessible and sustainable pharmaceutical novelty – not least in a still pandemic global crisis. They engage in a broader discussion that tries to think about alternative vaccine R&D beyond the petrified standards of a western dominated pharmaceutical industry. Yet, to organize R&D alternatively to predominant standards is exceedingly difficult in vaccine R&D.
Given the dominant narrative of scientists and IP advocates promoting the traditional IP regime due to its ability to ensure creativity and innovation and absorb uncertainty, it is puzzling how alternative ways of fostering novelty can be embraced in highly standardized and, therefore, isomorph organizational fields. Accordingly, we ask: How do open source vaccine R&D initiatives alternatively organize for novelty?
Through a qualitative case study analysis comparing Vaccinuum and RaDVaC – two open source vaccine initiatives, we show the diversity of this vaccine development niche that offers key advantages to the typical pharmaceutical industry vaccines. We do so by introducing two central practices of open source vaccine R&D that foster novelty within the broader necessities of accessibility and sustainability: repurposing and tinkering.