- Success is a team effort. Every single person in Pfizer BioNTech was instrumental in the development of the vaccine.
- It can pay to put purpose first. The mission in mind was to save the world. ROI was never a consideration.
- Find a way to make the impossible possible. The challenges were to develop the vaccine with a sixth month time-line and produce and transport at arctic temperatures millions of doses that had yet to be finalized.
- When you set a huge goal, you must encourage the out-of-the-box thinking required to achieve it. People brainstormed new options on their own.
- Isolated Scientists from financial concerns and freed them from excessive bureaucracy. Our people didn’t need to worry about the budget targets or hitting our annual earnings per share expectations.
- The need to embrace cooperation in crisis. Work on Covid-19 with BioNTech began without a financial contract and terms of partnership.
Source: HBR May-June’21
BhaskarChakravorti 