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Product cover image for Bavarian Nordic A/S: Yet Another COVID-19 Vaccine?

Bavarian Nordic A/S: Yet Another COVID-19 Vaccine?

Robert D. Austin, Christoph Grimpe

Product #:W34980
Supplier:Ivey
Discipline:Strategy
Setting:Denmark, 2023
Details:Case (PDF) • 10 pages • 2024-03-04

Subjects:

InnovationStrategy

Industries:

Healthcare sector

Geography:

EuropeDenmark
Your Price:$9.71

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This case focuses on the efforts of Bavarian Nordic A/S, a Danish pharmaceutical company, to create a new COVID-19 vaccine. Their vaccine is based on a newer technology and has the potential to provide longer-lasting protection than the currently dominant BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. However, the project also faces obstacles related to uncertainty of vaccine efficacy, financing, product positioning, distribution, and access to production infrastructure. Indeed, given the head start of the incumbents’ vaccines, the dominance in this business of large pharmaceutical companies, and the multitude of other COVID-19 vaccines, some wonder whether the company should be going down this path at all.

Learning Objectives

The case is intended to be used in courses on innovation management, strategic management, or innovation policy at advanced undergraduate, graduate, or executive levels. It depicts a complex innovation process, so it is probably best positioned later in such courses after simpler issues have already been covered. After preparing and discussing this case, students should be able to do the following:
  • Understand the dynamics of competition among designs, technologies, and platforms.
  • Discuss the role of dominant designs in an industry and how they emerge.
  • Recognize the importance of entry timing and first-mover advantages.
  • Appreciate how complex innovation processes, such as those in the pharmaceutical industry, are beset by uncertainty from multiple sources and the formidable difficulties of managing this uncertainty.
  • Understand the role of network externalities in such processes and how the need to align specialized assets can convey advantages to certain technologies that do not necessarily result in the “best” innovation becoming commercially viable or successful.
  • Reflect on the role of the government and other stakeholders and their options for influencing innovation in a way that is more likely to produce the best outcomes for society.
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Case Study: Bavarian Nordic A/S: Yet Another COVID-19 Vaccine? (English version) | Ivey Publishing