Piloting the Quantum Economy Blueprint Lessons from Saudi Arabia 2026

OPERATIONAL LESSON 3 Early multistakeholder engagement creates alignment that late-stage coordination cannot achieve Quantum ecosystems span government, academia and industry. Alignment among these actors stems not only from analytical design, but from proactive engagement while priorities are still taking shape. In Saudi Arabia, the pilot structured this engagement around four thematic workstreams co-led by representatives from different sectors: –Building foundation (led by academia): consolidated universities and research organizations to tackle infrastructure, education and workforce development –Cultivating innovation and ecosystem growth (led by industry): engaged major corporations and investment groups to concentrate on commercialization and industrial collaboration –Ensuring responsible use (led by government): worked with regulators and security agencies to ensure governance, security and regulatory frameworks –Unlocking societal benefits (led by the C4IR Saudi Arabia in collaboration with local partners): cultivated public awareness and societal engagement through World Quantum Day celebrations, webinar programming and strategic outreach in priority sectors This structure enabled shared problem-solving across institutional boundaries. Coordinating across institutional boundaries requires reconciling different sector timelines, priorities and definitions of success. Academic, government and industry stakeholders brought fundamentally different expectations about urgency and feasibility, and structured dialogue was required to reconcile these perspectives. Early multistakeholder engagement helps surface conflicting assumptions and overlapping mandates before implementation begins. Establishing collaborative structures from the outset enables shared ownership of national quantum strategies. Key takeaway: Early multistakeholder engagement surfaces conflicting assumptions, overlapping mandates and differing expectations about urgency and feasibility before implementation begins. This enables collaborative solutions and shared ownership of national strategy. Engagement in planning Saudi Arabia’s quantum economy has built working connections across diverse stakeholders that extend beyond quantum technologies to other research and development (R&D) sectors. It has also provided a welcome mandate to promote quantum computing within KAUST. David E. Keyes, Founding Dean and Founding Director, Extreme Computing Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Piloting the Quantum Economy Blueprint 16