Quantum Business Canvas: How we went from idea to concept for 20+ use cases in PlanQK

Quantum computing (QC) is a topic which is increasingly being talked about in the last months and years. Almost every newspage and major company has been writing about how it can be applied in business use cases to transform companies, whole industries or even our society. If you search for “quantum computing use cases” on the internet you will find articles, vendor presentations and papers on the archive praising the benefit of QC for hundreds of use cases. Often, they mention how toy problems were solved with existing techniques, which breakthrough methodologies were realized, and which benchmark against classical systems were achieved.

However, coming up with an interesting business case is not as easy as it seems. New technologies come with new challenges, assumptions, and narratives. Therefore, they also require new thinking and methods.

Also, on the business side, new thinking is required to identify problems that might become relevant and justify major upskilling, partnering and technology access investments. This is not easy because formerly intractable business problems are at the back of people´s minds and executives tend to focus on problems that are already known and can be incrementally increased.

Merging both the technical view on the feasibility, data requirement, problem formulation and hardware and software tooling with the business view on what drives the value of a business case, who profits and…