Effects of prior knowledge and collaborations on R&D performance in times of urgency: the case of COVID‐19 vaccine development

Abstract

Innovation usually requires time‐consuming exploratory approaches. However, external shocks and related crises, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic, lead to severe time pressures, which require short‐term R&D results. We investigate how organizations' prior collaboration and existing knowledge not only helped them cope with the crisis but also affected the vaccine's development performance. Specifically, we investigate the R&D outcomes of 386 organizations involved in the COVID‐19 vaccine's development within the first 18 months after the pandemic's outbreak. The results reveal that under urgency, organizations with prior scientific collaborations and technological knowledge exhibit a higher R&D performance. Furthermore, a broad network of diverse collaborators strengthened this relationship, thereby calling for more interdisciplinary R&D activities. We therefore extend the literature on innovation speed and strengthen long‐term R&D outcomes' role in organizations with a broad existing knowledge base and collaboration networks. We do so by specifically supporting such organizations' ability to integrate their previous R&D's and collaborations' knowledge to achieve rapid innovative outcomes under urgency.