Guest Post — Commercial Diplomacy: Building The Quantum Ecosystem

Guest Post by by Charlene B. Flick, Esq.

“Demonstrating that logical qubits can maintain coherence, we are paving the way toward fault-tolerant systems that can eventually scale to millions of qubits!”

The CEO paused, seemingly absorbing this revelation.  

“Congratulations, Professor. Forgive me, but what does it do?”

This is the question every startup in the quantum value chain should be able to answer. The quantum industry’s task, alongside its formidable technical challenges, is to clearly define that benefit, thereby creating demand for a market that has yet to mature. Quantum needs to continue to build its ecosystem. The approach to doing so, I would posit, is not unlike the work of a diplomat representing a government.   

Diplomats, or commercial diplomats in this instance who represent companies rather than governments, educate, listen, report back, and foster relationships. Diplomacy is ultimately an exercise in creating alignment amongst parties whose interests are not necessarily the same, but whose objectives may be sufficiently complementary to create a way forward for everyone. That is not selling, but it creates the catalyst for marketplaces to blossom.

And although the quantum community understands this next generation of compute will create incredible value in the years to come, the road to get there is one that we’ve been down before.