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~ Your Thinking Forward editors

THREE INSIGHTS FOR THE WEEK

Generative artificial intelligence is poised to profoundly affect the

practice of entrepreneurship. “We’re in a moment of transformation,” said
Ethan Mollick, SM ’04, PhD ’10, an associate professor at the University of
Pennsylvania who studies AI, innovation, and startups.

In a recent episode of the “Trust the Process” podcast, hosted by the

Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship’s Bill Aulet, Mollick
identified three trends related to AI and entrepreneurship:

 The addition of generative AI as a co-founder. Entrepreneurs are

expected to perform a wide range of time-consuming tasks that
AI can handle well, such as writing emails or coding a website.
Delegating that work to AI lets them focus on their top skills.

 New approaches to the practice of entrepreneurship. The ability

to test and experiment easily, quickly, and relatively cheaply
represents a big change in methodology and “how we approach
entrepreneurship, from the ground up,” Mollick said.

 Generative AI-induced changes to the competitive

landscape. Some companies will become obsolete, and others
will have to change their approach. What’s more, competitors
across the globe now have equal access to the same
transformative technology.

The full power of quantum computing isn’t expected to be available

most organizations until 2035 or later, but leaders need to start thinking
now about where they might leverage the technology.

Toward that end, a group of MIT researchers, in partnership with

Accenture, has developed a framework to help executives evaluate the
potential of quantum computing to solve real-world business problems at
their companies.

“Implicitly, there’s a race going on between the classical computer and

quantum computer. For each type of question you want to solve, you want
to know which type of computer will win so you can take the best
advantage of it,” said Neil Thompson, a research scientist at the MIT
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

The framework establishes the benchmark of quantum economic

advantage, which occurs when a particular problem can be solved more
quickly with a quantum computer than with a comparably priced classical
computer.

To determine the quantum economic advantage, leaders should consider

two conditions:

 Feasibility, meaning whether a quantum computer exists that is

sufficiently powerful to solve a particular problem.

 Algorithmic advantage, meaning whether a quantum computer

would be faster at completing a specific task compared with a
similarly priced classical computer.

The overlap between the two is the quantum economic advantage.