Innovation Systems Under Crisis: Vaccine Development in Asia and Europe

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered unprecedented efforts in vaccine development, manufacturing, and distribution, revealing both the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary health-related innovation systems in many countries around the world. This chapter examines the conditions under which vaccines could be developed rapidly and made available in a timely manner, drawing comparative lessons from Europe and East Asia. Conceptualizing vaccines as part of a highly complex sectoral system of innovation, we define success as the speedy development and manufacturing of safe and effective vaccines and their timely availability to populations. Building on an analysis of vaccine technologies and the vaccine value chain, the chapter identifies key trade-offs between safety and efficacy, time-to-market, and global availability. We conduct comparative case studies of four prominent vaccine development efforts: BioNTech–Pfizer (Germany–USA), Oxford–AstraZeneca (UK), SK BioScience (South Korea), and Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corporation (Taiwan). These cases allow us to examine how firms, governments, international organizations, universities, and philanthropic actors interacted to overcome coordination, market, and regulatory failures under crisis conditions. Empirically, the chapter highlights the partially successful role of (international) innovation ecosystems, access to substantial public and private funding—including advance purchase agreements—and new regulatory arrangements such as rolling reviews and emergency use authorizations. These mechanisms enabled firms to compress development timelines, scale up manufacturing at risk, and navigate regulatory uncertainty. At the same time, the analysis reveals important limitations of these “success cases,” notably the constrained global availability of high-end vaccines and the exclusion of low- and middle-income countries, raising questions about vaccines as global public goods. The chapter contributes to the sectoral system of innovation literature by extending the notion of success beyond technological performance to include distribution and availability. It argues that in health-related sectors, innovation outcomes must be assessed not only from firm-level or national perspectives, but also in terms of global welfare. The findings offer lessons for future industrial and innovation policy aimed at building resilient, equitable vaccine ecosystems beyond the COVID-19 crisis.