Building a New Front? The Emerging Infrastructure for Quantum Computing

The management of information systems has a long-standing tradition of studying information infrastructures and the architecture of the systems they represent to understand the socio-technical phenomena in organizations (Henfridsson and Bygstad, 2013; Henningson and Eaton, 2023;Koutsikouri et al., 2018; Mehrizi et al., 2019; Rodol Modol and Eaton, 2021; Tilson et al., 2010). Systems evolve so fast that infrastructures struggle to adapt and keep the dynamic movement of the changes in systems. The existing literature shows that due to this constant change and considering the layered modular architecture of digital technologies (Yoo et al., 2010), previously launched technologies are entrenched, making novel technologies dependent on the previous ones (Rodol Modol and Eaton, 2021). However, little focus has been given to what happens when novel technologies that can’t work with the previously entrenched technologies arrive in the infrastructure, particularly when these technologies do not follow the organizing digital logic underlying digital infrastructures (e.g., quantum computing). In this extended abstract, we present the exploration of the emerging infrastructure of quantum computing and its relationship with the existing digital infrastructure in the IT industry. Using an industry database of 1132 companies working with quantum technologies, we analyzed the different architectures proposed by these. We plan to conduct a network analysis to understand the relationship between the organizations and the type of quantum computers they use. We expect to find potential trends to outline the different perspectives on developing a quantum computer, helping practitioners prepare for the upcoming quantum computer disruption. We also expect to contribute to theory by expanding the view over infrastructure, bringing a dimension that relates but goes beyond digital. We outline the main conversations in the literature we join and the expected analysis to conduct with our data. Also, expectations regarding the workshop are shared to receive feedback on further developing the article.