The Innovation System Behind Modernas Covid-19 Vaccine
Noubar Afeyan, cofounder and chair of Moderna Therapeutics and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, says that the breakthrough innovation behind the company\u2019s Covid-19 vaccine came not as a stroke of luck, but from a repeatable process. He outlines a system called \u201cemergent discovery\u201d that involves working back from future ideals, pioneering in novel spaces, encouraging unreasonable ideas, and persistently questioning hypotheses. And he says this process applies to other industries besides life sciences. Afeyan is the coauthor, with HBS professor Gary Pisano, of the HBR article "What Evolution Can Teach Us About Innovation."