Can Operation Warp Speed Serve as a Model for Accelerating Innovations beyond COVID Vaccines?

The authors are grateful to Robert Kadlec for an interview that provided inside information filling out our understanding of Operation Warp Speed, to Fatma Ceren Dolay for excellent research assistance, to Santi Ruiz for ably editing and streamlining our prose, and to Heidi Williams and conference participants at the May 2024 NBER Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Economy workshop for helpful comments. The editor, Ben Jones, provided extensive advice that substantially improved the paper. All remaining errors are our own. Snyder serves as faculty co-director of the Market Shaping Accelerator (MSA), and Hoyt and Snyder are affiliates of the Dartmouth International Vaccine Initiative (DIVI). The authors thank the MSA and DIVI for support. Snyder is grateful to the Institute for Progress for funding his work on this project. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.