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The quantum window is open, but most CEOs are still looking the other way

The quantum window is open, but most CEOs are still looking the other way
The quantum window is open, but most CEOs are still looking the other way
3:56

Most of the leaders who missed the AI wave didn't miss it because they weren't paying attention. They missed it because they were waiting for certainty that never came, until it was too late to build the capabilities that would have mattered.

The same institutional logic is now playing out with quantum, and the stakes of delayed structural response are higher.

Here is the uncomfortable truth

Quantum is not five to ten years away anymore. It is being commercialised now, in optimisation, logistics, drug discovery, materials science, financial modelling, and cryptography. National strategies are funded. Ecosystems are being built. The infrastructure investments are happening quietly, while most boardroom conversations are still treating this as a research story.

Finland, where Hellon has 2 Studios, has just published a national Quantum Technology Strategy targeting €3 billion in sector turnover by 2035, up from €130 million today. Governments do not publish strategies like that to be aspirational. They publish them because the commercial window is opening up.

The organisations positioning themselves now will not be the ones with the deepest quantum expertise. They will be the ones who understood early enough what questions to ask, what capabilities to build, and where their industry's pressure points are.

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A pattern worth recognising

In 2017, we made a deliberate bet on human-centred AI at Hellon. Not because the path was clear, but from a reading of the signal that proved durable. We restructured our own practice first, built capability ahead of client demand, and developed a grounded point of view at a moment when most organisations were still debating whether the shift would be significant.

That early structural investment compounded over time in ways that reactive positioning cannot replicate. By the time AI became the defining business conversation, we were already several years into the work.

I am not sharing this as a credential. I am sharing it as a pattern worth recognising, because quantum is roughly where AI was in 2017, and the same logic applies. The leaders who acted early on AI did not have better information. They had a higher tolerance for moving before the picture was complete.

The bottleneck is not the technology

Finland has world-class quantum research. So do Germany, the US, Canada, and a handful of others. The science is advancing faster than most forecasts predicted.

What is lagging is the translation layer, the bridge between what quantum can do and what your business should do about it. That gap is explicit even in Finland's own national strategy: awareness of quantum's potential among industrial end users remains low, few companies have invested in application development, and without acceleration, the competitive window could close before it is fully exploited.

"This is not a technology problem. It is a strategy and transformation problem, the kind that tends to damage organisations not because it is difficult to address, but because its consequences are slow enough to be repeatedly deferred. "

- Jaakko Wäänänen, CEO

Hellon

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Three questions worth sitting with

1. If quantum computing materially reduces the cost and time of optimisation in your industry, who captures that advantage, you or your competitors?

2. If post-quantum cryptography becomes a compliance requirement in your sector within three years, how exposed is your current infrastructure?

3. If your most aggressive competitor starts piloting quantum-enabled applications this year, what is your response?

If you do not have answers, or if your answer is "we are monitoring the space", that is the signal.

Why Hellon joined Finland's quantum business ecosystem? 

In April 2026, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding to join BusinessQ, the business community of Finland's national quantum institute. Not to become quantum engineers, but because the translation layer between quantum capability and business value is exactly where we work, helping organisations turn emerging technology into strategy, transformation roadmaps, and solutions that real people can actually use.

We are entering this space deliberately early. The same way we entered AI.

If you lead an organisation that is beginning to ask what quantum means for your business, or has been deferring that question, I would like to talk before the answer becomes obvious to everyone.

That is usually when it is too late to matter.

Jaakko Wäänänen is CEO of Hellon, a human-centred transformation consultancy with offices in Helsinki, Oulu, and London. hellon.com

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