How to Create a Quantum Technologies Ecosystem in Brazil

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Rafael Veríssimo (Cofundador Brazil Quantum)

Emerging technologies can have an enormous impact on a country’s economy and quality of life. Science and technology are the great differentiators of more developed countries, just as the world’s largest companies today are in the technology sector. Brazil Quantum is certain that quantum technologies will have a great impact in the future. Creating an innovative and prosperous ecosystem so that we can enjoy the benefits of these technologies in our country will be a major challenge. This is because this ecosystem involves various agents that must work together for its success: entrepreneurs, universities and research centers, investors, accelerators, companies, and government. In this text, we want to discuss what actions can be taken to foster this ecosystem and comment on some challenges we currently face, not only in terms of quantum technologies but in the development of science and technology in Brazil.

I. Human Capital

A first important aspect for the development of any area of science and technology is having qualified and entrepreneurial workforce. In the context of quantum technologies, we don’t necessarily need to develop them in Brazil, but we need people who have the capacity to use them in the best possible way. For example, we most likely won’t have a Brazilian quantum computer at any point in the coming years, but we need people who understand this technology and can make use of it to improve services and undertake ventures.

A major challenge for Brazil in this aspect will be our education. It’s no news to anyone that education in Brazil has much room for improvement. In PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2018, the country ranked 57th among 77 nations. In relation to our neighbors, Brazil was last in mathematics in South America, tied with Argentina. Additionally, along with Peru and Argentina, Brazil had the worst placement in sciences.

In terms of scientific production, we’re not doing so badly. Brazil appears as 17th placed both in terms of publications and total cited articles. However, if Brazil wants to emerge as a reference in science and technology, besides improvements in the quality of our education, we will need more qualified workforce. In 2014, Brazil was ranked as the 3rd country with the highest level of lack of qualified people, behind Japan and India, and in areas of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology, this gap may be even larger.

The discussion about how we can improve education in our country is large and complex, and talking about its role in training people who will work with quantum technology in the future deserves a text of its own. However, there are several actions we can start taking today that can contribute to developing these people. First, specific programs to develop Brazilian talents are essential for the growth of this community. This can be done through courses, workshops, seminars, meetups, or hackathons.

A second aspect is that a successful ecosystem needs to acquire a minimum quantity of people to really take off, which is a major challenge in areas where the entry barrier is already high, as is the case with quantum technologies. One way to solve this is to include as many people as possible. The environment should be accessible to beginners and should not be limited to people from science, engineering, and related fields. We need more people interested in the subject, regardless of their areas of training, and they can play a fundamental role in developing the ecosystem. In the book Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell articulated the “Law of the Few” in which he identifies three types of people essential to the success of any social phenomenon. The categories are:

Connector: These are people who have a large network of contacts and enable important connections within the ecosystem. These people help create the kind of open and collaborative culture for which Silicon Valley is famous.
Maven: These are people with specific knowledge about the market and industry, who facilitate ecosystem growth through important information and ideas.
Maven: These are people with specific knowledge about the market and industry, who facilitate ecosystem growth through important information and ideas.

Finally, creating roadmaps and pathways can help many people who want to enter the area but don’t yet know how. At this point, mentors can be essential to help people who are starting to understand the best path, whether to become a researcher, an entrepreneur, or anything else.

II. Investment

The second relevant aspect in developing our quantum technologies ecosystem is investment. This is important both for research development and helping entrepreneurs, and even allowing organization of events, publicity, etc. However, the scenario is not very encouraging. In 2017, Brazil ranked 27th in terms of percentage of GDP invested in research and development, with only 1.3%. For comparison, first place is South Korea, with 4.3% of GDP invested in R&D, and countries like the USA and China, which are the largest investments in absolute terms, appear with 2.7% and 2% respectively.

It’s worth highlighting some important aspects of this data. The first is that in Brazil, more than the amount of resources being applied to R&D, we need to allocate these resources more effectively and intelligently. The second aspect is that these investments have been decreasing since then, just as they had decreased from 2015 to 2017. Discounting inflation, the ST&I area has a budget similar to that of 2001.

Looking at the private sector, the scenario is not better. While in OECD countries companies invest on average the equivalent of 1.3% of GDP, in Brazil this value is less than half, with 0.6% of GDP. However, partnership with private sector companies and individual investors is probably the quickest and easiest way to get investments. Various companies worldwide are using partnership models to start evaluating the applications of quantum technologies in their business models, and this can be replicated in Brazil. We also need to seek government incentives and investments, however this is a longer-term project given that the processes are more difficult and bureaucratic.

III. Strategic Vision

Finally, developing an ecosystem requires a vision of what that community wants to achieve over time. Therefore, it is essential that leaders build together with their members an image of how the future should be. However, unlike various countries in the world, Brazil still doesn’t have any type of planning or strategy to start developing quantum technologies nationally. It seems that Brazil hasn’t even acknowledged the existence of these new technologies, and this is concerning. Without a vision of where we want to go, we certainly won’t move from where we are. This is true for any area. In fact, in 2020 Brazil ranked 63rd in the government AI readiness ranking published by Oxford University. One of the main factors that Brazil lost in relation to other countries was the lack of a strategic vision for developing this area. That said, we need to start creating a plan for the development of quantum technologies in Brazil right now.

Brazil Quantum emerged in 2020 with the goal of helping with some of these aspects, and in 2021 we want to do even more for the quantum technology ecosystem in Brazil. I leave here the invitation for all interested parties, from quantum computing specialists to people who know nothing and are not from the field, to contribute to this journey. We need all of you.

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