Quantum Computing Readiness
A readiness check on whether an organisation has the infrastructure, talent, and genuine use case to justify investing in quantum computing now, rather than chasing the technology because it's trending.
Reach for this when…
- A board member has asked what your quantum strategy is.
- A vendor is pitching quantum computing at you and you need to sanity-check the pitch.
- R&D wants budget for quantum experimentation and you need to know if it's warranted.
How to run it
- Map your current computational infrastructure and where classical computing already meets your needs.
- Identify whether you have a genuine problem class quantum suits (optimisation, simulation, cryptography), not just a general interest.
- Assess talent: do you have or can you access the specialist skills required.
- Weigh cost and timeline against the maturity of the specific quantum application you'd use.
- Decide: invest, monitor, or ignore for now.
A worked example
Situation. Ayse Demir led R&D at a materials science firm in Izmir, Turkey, under pressure from the board to 'have a quantum strategy' after a competitor's press release.
Applied. Running the readiness check, her team found no problem in their pipeline that actually needed quantum simulation yet, but did find a genuine future fit in molecular modelling three years out.
Result. She recommended monitoring and one exploratory academic partnership instead of a lab. The board accepted a smaller ask, and the decision explained why.
The catch
Most of what gets called 'quantum readiness' is really a hype filter, since the honest answer for most organisations today is not yet. The assessment is only as good as how rigorously you resist the pressure to invest just because the topic is fashionable.
If nobody can name the specific problem quantum would solve better than what you already use, you are not ready, you are curious.