Insider Brief
- Companies that wait for quantum computing to mature before engaging risk ceding influence over how the technology develops and who benefits most from it, according to researchers at MIT Sloan Management Review.
- Quantum computing belongs to a class of foundational technologies — like electricity and the internet — whose economic value emerges gradually through years of experimentation between developers and the businesses that use them, not all at once when a technical threshold is crossed.
- Executives are advised to hire translators who can link quantum capabilities to specific business problems, identify near-term experiments that justify modest investment, and create organizational space insulated from short-term performance pressure for longer-horizon exploration.
- Photo by Steve A Johnson on Pexels
Business leaders watching quantum computing from the sidelines risk falling behind companies already shaping how the technology will create value, according to the MIT Sloan Management Review.
The conventional business approach to quantum computing — wait until it’s proven, then adopt — may miss how transformative technologies actually generate economic value, write researchers Avi Goldfarb of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and Florenta Teodoridis of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. Writing in MIT Sloan Management Review, the two report that quantum computing belongs to a category of so-called general-purpose technologies, technologies so foundational that their value emerges slowly, through years of back-and-forth between developers and the companies that use them.
Electricity and the internet followed the same arc. Early adopters of electric power didn’t just plug in and profit — they redesigned factory floors, invented new appliances and rebuilt distribution networks over decades. The internet’s biggest economic winners weren’t the companies that waited for broadband to mature. They were the ones that reimagined entire industries around what digital connectivity made possible.
Quantum computing may follow the same path, according to the researchers.
Quantum computers use the principles of quantum mechanics to process information in ways that conventional computers cannot. Where a traditional computer bit represents either a zero or a one, a quantum bit — called a qubit — can represent both simultaneously, boosting speed for certain classes of calculations — expontentially faster, theoretically. The technology holds promise for problems in drug discovery, financial modeling, logistics and materials science that are too complex for today’s machines to solve efficiently.
But raw qubit counts and error rates, the metrics that dominate technology headlines, are a poor guide to when companies should engage, the researchers explain. Economic value from enabling technologies doesn’t arrive in a single leap once a technical threshold is crossed. It builds gradually, shaped in large part by the companies willing to experiment before the technology is fully ready.
The Catch-22 Slowing Progress
The researchers write that companies want proof of value before investing, but proof only comes from companies investing. That Catch-22 may be a criticial, structural problem facing businesses who could benefit from quantum’s potential.
When businesses hold back, quantum hardware developers receive no clear signals about which applications matter most, which performance improvements are worth pursuing or what cost and speed thresholds would justify real-world use. That uncertainty slows development. Which, in turn, gives waiting companies another reason to wait.
“Near-term value-capture uncertainty sustains demand uncertainty and discourages co-invention, which in turn makes it harder to resolve technological uncertainty,” Goldfarb and Teodoridis write. “Companies want proof before experimenting, but proof often arrives only because companies experiment.”
Early engagement can actively steer the direction of the technology itself, according to the researchers. Financial services firms that engage now will push quantum developers to optimize for financial modeling problems. Logistics companies that experiment will pull the technology toward supply chain applications. The companies shaping those priorities today will be better positioned to capture value when the technology matures.
What Early Movers Already Know
Real-world examples suggest the strategy is already paying early dividends. In 2011, Lockheed Martin entered a multiyear agreement for a 128-qubit quantum annealing machine, establishing a dedicated research center at the University of Southern California rather than treating the system as an off-the-shelf product. The goal was not immediate transformation but sustained, iterative learning about what the technology could and could not do.
IBM took a different approach in 2016, launching a cloud service that gave anyone access to a 5-qubit quantum processor. Roughly 7,000 users registered in the first week. That early exposure seeded a generation of developers and researchers with hands-on experience. Several similar cloud platforms followed from companies including Amazon, Alibaba and Honeywell.
Other industry experiments have produced value even without quantum hardware delivering a decisive advantage. Companies including Fujitsu have developed quantum-inspired algorithms — optimization methods that mimic quantum approaches but run on conventional computers — and applied them to warehouse routing, portfolio management and production planning. IBM and Google have reported similar spinoff advances for classical computing that emerged directly from their quantum research programs.
Three Steps for Business Leaders
The researchers offer a practical guide for executives who want to move from watching to acting.
First, companies should identify or hire people who can translate between quantum capabilities and specific business problems. These “boundary spanners” — as the researchers dub them — need to understand both the technology and the company’s competitive pressures. Without them, businesses risk either overstating quantum’s near-term utility or missing industry-specific applications entirely.
The researchers also advise businesses to find near-term problems where even modest performance improvements in cost, speed or resource use would justify a small experiment. The goal isn’t to find quantum computing’s killer app on the first try. It’s to begin accumulating organizational knowledge about how quantum methods differ from conventional ones in practice.
Finally, they should create protected space for longer-horizon experimentation, insulated from the short-term performance metrics that govern core operations. The researchers point to Walmart and Sears as a cautionary contrast: Walmart redesigned its supply chain and logistics infrastructure around the internet’s possibilities over years. Sears treated the web as a supplementary sales channel bolted onto existing operations. The difference in outcomes is well documented.
“The implication for quantum computing is that organizational space should be deliberately created to enable exploration that is not tightly tied to immediate returns,” the researchers write. “Such experimentation may need to be separated from core operations, supported by different incentive structures, and evaluated based on learning rather than near-term financial impact. The goal is not simply to test quantum tools but to explore how quantum-enabled capabilities might eventually support new ways of delivering value.”
