The quantum window is open, but most Singapore companies could miss it

QUANTUM computing has a branding problem. Mention it in a Raffles Place boardroom and half the audience pictures a physics lecture. The other half pictures a gadget that will not be practical for another decade. Both reactions are wrong, and expensive.

Try a different framing: Quantum mechanics already runs through your daily life. The MRI machine that scanned your knee uses it. The GPS that gets you to your next meeting depends on atomic precision that is, at root, quantum. Every laser, from supermarket scanners to the fibre-optic cables, is quantised light at work.

What is new is that the technology is moving out of labs and onto balance sheets, and it is moving faster than most planning cycles can absorb.