It is spring 2020, Covid-19 is exploding worldwide and you are leading a pharmaceutical company that is behind its rivals in the discovery of a vaccine. Should you accept government money, and the bonds tied to it, to try to catch up?
Scenarios like this are already being studied by first-year MBA students at Harvard University and other business schools in the country. The courses aim to analyze the management decisions – good and bad – made during the pandemic and to collect the lessons that can be taught, taking into account the benefit of a retrospective.
“My aspiration was to give them, as future leaders, a way to judge these things. How do I ask the right questions? How do I make an informed judgment? Willy Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School, spoke about this pharmaceutical case study used in his fall course, which also exposed students to the inner workings of the life sciences industry.
Its technology and operations management class – which was delivered online and in person on the school’s Boston campus – considered how the company could offset the costs of clinical trials and increase manufacturing by accepting funding from Operation Warp Speed, the vaccine program against US government coronavirus. But MBA candidates also had to weigh whether the company would like the requirements that come with that funding, including allowing the government to control the price of the vaccine.
After more than an hour of debate, most students agreed that the drugmaker should give up government funding, said Shih. Many argued that the company should stay with private development, saying it was better for the long-term health of its vaccine business that did not depend on government assistance.