Dear Readers, Brilliant Minds and Game-Changers,
I hope you are doing great!
Yesterday, QAI Ventures brought its global quantum ecosystem together in Basel.
For me, this is not simply an event I attended.
I am honoured to work with QAI Ventures from day one and, through that relationship, with companies within its ecosystem.
So yesterday's Summit was a particularly visible moment inside something that exists throughout the year: an ecosystem connecting founders, researchers, investors, industrial companies, policymakers and technologies.
And that raises a question perfectly suited to The Intangible Navigator: What does an ecosystem actually create?
Not physically.
Strategically.
A conversation creates knowledge.
An introduction creates access.
Repeated interaction creates trust.
A pilot creates evidence.
An investor changes how a founder understands capital.
An industrial company exposes a bottleneck.
A scientist reveals where technology may be heading.
A founder identifies an opportunity nobody else in the room had articulated.
None of these immediately appears as revenue.
But each can influence the future ability of an organisation to create revenue.
That is intangible capital.
Start with a distinction: contacts are not capital
We use the word “network” casually.
“I have a strong network.”
But what does that actually mean?
Having 20,000 LinkedIn connections does not necessarily represent strategic capital.
Knowing someone does not automatically create value.
A relationship begins becoming an asset when it gives an organisation access to something meaningful:
- knowledge,
- trust,
- technology,
- capital,
- markets,
- talent,
- distribution,
- credibility,
- or future opportunity.
That is relational capital.
The difference between a contact and relational capital is therefore not the existence of the relationship.
It is what that relationship makes possible.
Ecosystems combine complementary assets
One reason events such as the QAI Ventures Quantum Global Summit matter is that very different actors possess different forms of capital.
Researchers possess scientific knowledge.
Founders possess emerging technology and execution capability.
Industrial companies possess problems, infrastructure, data and markets.
Investors possess capital and often cross-company pattern recognition.
Policymakers shape parts of the environment in which innovation develops.
No individual actor possesses everything.
The value of an ecosystem appears when those assets interact.
The official Summit positioning reflects exactly that ambition: bringing together entrepreneurship, science, industry and quantum investment for collaboration and exchange.
The first asset created is often intelligence
Imagine returning from Basel after several conversations.
Three industrial companies independently describe the same technical bottleneck.
That is not merely interesting. It may be market intelligence.
Several investors challenge the same assumption in your financial model.
Signal.
Two researchers describe a technical direction you had underestimated.
Signal.
Multiple startups begin solving adjacent pieces of the same value chain.
Competitive intelligence.
One application is constantly discussed, but nobody can identify who will actually pay.
Also intelligence.
Events compress information.
But information becomes an asset only when the organisation captures it and lets it influence decisions.
Otherwise the individual learns, but the company does not
This problem exists in many organisations.
An executive attends a conference.
They have twenty excellent conversations.
They return enthusiastic.
Two weeks later, almost all of the knowledge remains inside that person's memory.
The individual attended the summit. The company effectively did not.
That is not merely poor follow-up. It is failed knowledge transfer.
If attendance is strategically important, the organisation should ask: What did we learn that should now exist independently of the person who attended?
Capture four things
After a strategically important ecosystem event, I would capture four categories.
1. Signals
What changed my understanding?
- Technology.
- Market.
- Competition.
- Customers.
- Investment.
- Policy.
2. Opportunities
Which conversations could plausibly create:
- a client,
- pilot,
- partnership,
- investment,
- licence,
- research programme,
- or new market?
3. Risks
What did we discover that could challenge:
- our roadmap,
- our assumptions,
- our IP position,
- our business model,
- or our timing?
4. Hypotheses
What should we now test?
This last category is critical.
A conversation is not evidence.
But it can create a better experiment.
Relational capital also creates access
Relationships can give a company access to assets it cannot create quickly itself.
A research institute offers specialised expertise.
An industrial company offers a testing environment.
An investor creates access to capital.
A strategic partner provides distribution.
A startup offers complementary technology.
A hospital provides access to a real clinical context.
A supplier provides specialist capabilities.
That access can shorten development timelines dramatically.
The relationship therefore contains time value.
And time, again, is an intangible competitive asset.
But relational capital is fragile
Unlike a patent, a relationship does not belong neatly to a company.
Relationships live through people.
Suppose one founder is the only person trusted by:
- key investors,
- important customers,
- major scientific partners,
- and strategic suppliers.
From one perspective, that founder is extraordinarily valuable.
From another, the organisation has a concentration risk.
If the person leaves—or simply becomes overloaded—what happens to that network?
This is the relational equivalent of know-how existing only inside one engineer's head.
The objective is not to institutionalise friendship.
It is to ensure critical institutional relationships are not accidentally dependent on a single individual.
Reputation amplifies relational capital
There is another asset flowing through ecosystems: credibility.
An introduction from a trusted person changes the starting point of a conversation.
A startup selected by a credible accelerator receives a different level of initial attention.
A founder introduced through a respected investor may obtain a meeting that would otherwise take months.
A recommendation from a credible scientist reduces uncertainty.
Trust is not absolute.
Due diligence still matters.
But trust reduces friction.
And reduced friction has economic value.
This is reputational capital interacting with relational capital.
QAI Ventures illustrates something important
The broader quantum ecosystem itself is unusually interconnected.
The EPO/OECD study identifies more than 4,600 firms participating in the global quantum ecosystem, while only around 830 are classified as core quantum companies. [1]
That means quantum is not going to industrialise through quantum startups alone.
It requires interaction with adjacent actors:
- pharmaceutical companies,
- financial institutions,
- manufacturers,
- software providers,
- telecommunications companies,
- research organisations,
- governments,
- healthcare,
- defence,
- and many others.
In such an environment, the ecosystem is not merely a community around the technology.
It becomes part of the innovation infrastructure.
The portfolio effect
This becomes particularly interesting from my position working across QAI Ventures and companies within its startup ecosystem.
A startup normally sees its own technology.
An ecosystem can see connections.
Company A develops infrastructure relevant to Company B.
Company C encounters an industrial problem that may create an application for Company D.
A corporate partner introduces a use case.
An investor introduces another market.
Knowledge generated in one part of the ecosystem can illuminate another.
Obviously, confidentiality boundaries must be respected rigorously.
But the ability to recognise patterns without transferring confidential information is itself strategically valuable.
An ecosystem can therefore create something individual companies cannot create as easily alone: collective pattern recognition.
That is another intangible asset.
Optionality may be the most valuable output
Suppose you met someone at the Summit but there was no immediate project.
Was the meeting useless?
No.
But neither should we pretend every conversation has enormous strategic value.
The correct question is:
What plausible future option did this relationship create?
Perhaps:
- a future customer,
- a partner,
- an investor,
- a new jurisdiction,
- a research collaboration,
- a recruitment opportunity,
- an acquisition target,
- or simply someone whose perspective improves future decisions.
That is optionality.
It may never be exercised.
But a portfolio of good strategic options makes an organisation more resilient.
The 72-hour test
For relationships with immediate relevance, I like a simple principle.
Within approximately 72 hours, convert the conversation into the smallest meaningful next action.
Not: “Great meeting you.”
Instead:
- “Let's arrange the technical discussion we mentioned.”
- “I will introduce you to X.”
- “Here is the paper we discussed.”
- “Let's scope the use case.”
- “Let's put an NDA in place and exchange the relevant information.”
Momentum decays.
The goal is to convert social energy into strategic action before context disappears.
The 30-day test
Then return to the relationship later.
Did it produce:
- new information?
- a meeting?
- an introduction?
- a collaboration?
- a changed hypothesis?
- a commercial opportunity?
Not every good relationship needs immediate monetisation.
But understanding what kind of capital the relationship represents helps allocate attention intelligently.
Relationships also determine the value of IP
There is a tendency to imagine IP as something self-contained.
A patent exists. Therefore it has value.
But a patent usually requires something around it:
- customers,
- licensees,
- manufacturing,
- capital,
- partners,
- standards,
- distribution,
- or enforcement capability.
Technology needs markets.
Know-how needs people capable of implementing it.
Data needs rights and infrastructure.
Brand needs an audience.
The economic value of intangible assets depends heavily on the relationships that activate them.
This is why IP management and ecosystem strategy are more connected than they initially appear.
From CRM to strategic relationship architecture
I am not advocating for assigning a financial valuation to every person in a CRM.
That would be both absurd and dehumanising: the complete opposite of our philosophy at DELSOL group!
But companies can identify strategically important institutional relationships.
For each one:
- Why does this relationship matter?
- What capability or access does it create?
- Who maintains it internally?
- What commitments exist?
- What confidential information has been exchanged?
- What is the next strategic action?
- What would happen if it disappeared?
Those are governance questions.
Not sales administration.
So, what did the Summit create?
This is ultimately the question I find most interesting.
Not: How many people were there?
Not: How many business cards did we collect?
Not even: Was the event successful?
Instead:
What can we now do that we could not do before?
Perhaps a startup now understands its market differently.
Perhaps an industrial company has identified a new technical possibility.
Perhaps two technologies have discovered an integration point.
Perhaps an investor has discovered an opportunity.
Perhaps a founder has abandoned a weak assumption.
Perhaps QAI Ventures itself sees a pattern across its ecosystem more clearly.
Those are intangible outputs.
And they can become extremely tangible later.
The deeper role of a CIAO
This is also why I believe the Chief Intangible Assets Officer role extends far beyond patents.
Someone needs to look across:
- IP,
- trade secrets,
- knowledge,
- data,
- relationships,
- reputation,
- talent,
- contracts,
- and strategic optionality.
Not to “own” all of them operationally.
But to understand how they combine to create—or destroy—competitive value.
An innovation ecosystem produces all of these assets continuously.
If nobody recognises them, they remain accidental.
If they are recognised and governed, they can become strategic.
One final thought from Basel
When the presentation screens go dark and everyone leaves the room, much of the summit disappears.
The chairs remain.
The venue remains.
The slides remain somewhere online.
But the most important outputs leave inside people:
- New knowledge.
- Changed assumptions.
- Trust.
- Introductions.
- Ideas.
- Opportunities.
- Options.
Those things are difficult to measure.
That does not make them economically irrelevant.
It makes them intangible.
And that is exactly why they deserve management.
So my question after this week is simple:
What did it make possible today that was not possible yesterday?
The answer is where networking ends.
And intangible capital begins.
