Signalling theory

In a market with no shared prices, shares or benchmarks, actors articulate their position through observable signals. A signal informs to the extent it is costly and hard to fake. The core question: do actors substitute low-cost signals for costly capability evidence?

Ecosystem low-cost signal share

High-cost signals

152

Low-cost signals

Signal cost mix

Costly signals (Rieger et al. 2025; Suchman 1995) separate genuine capability from low-cost signalling.

Capability vs legitimacy channel

What an actor can do (Knight & Cavusgil 2004) vs social acceptance (Suchman 1995).

Do low-cost signals track costly ones?

Each point is an actor. X = share of their signals that are low-cost; Y = Cost-Weighted Signal Score. An actor high-right is loud but lightly-backed; an actor high-left is backing its position with costly evidence.

Per-actor breakdown

Actor	Activity	Cost-weighted	Low-cost %	High-cost	Cap.–Leg.
Swiss Quantum Initiative	81.44	66.72	0%	28	0.09
ETH Zurich Quantum Center	78.65	61.10	0%	18	0.42
Basel Precision Instruments	66.70	49.43	0%	8	0.14
Basel Quantum Center at the University of Basel	64.86	47.63	0%	7	0.25
Swiss Nanoscience Institute	54.82	42.96	0%	13	0.06
National Centre for Competence in Research SPIN	54.17	38.25	0%	1	0.11
Quantum Science and Engineering Center at EPFL	40.86	30.43	0%	6	0.25
Quantum Technology Initiative at CERN	40.39	28.29	11%	3	0.23
ID Quantique	40.32	27.99	3%	0	0.39
IonQ	40.02	28.69	3%	3	0.50
Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI)	37.79	28.93	0%	7	0.35
The Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA)	32.61	22.74	5%	1	0.17
Federal Institute of Metrology (METAS)	32.50	23.90	0%	4	0.39
ZuriQ	26.67	21.55	5%	8	0.20
QuantumBasel	23.92	17.13	0%	1	0.39
ETH-PSI Quantum Computing Hub	21.83	15.28	0%	0	0.50
Miraex	20.18	15.64	10%	5	0.38
Swissphotonics	20.00	16.20	0%	10	0.12
Geneva Quantum Centre at the University of Geneva	18.67	13.35	0%	1	0.22
Zurich Instruments	18.08	12.66	0%	0	0.67
Terra Quantum	16.82	13.39	0%	5	0.25
Qnami	16.60	12.48	0%	2	0.17
Swissnex	15.87	11.00	3%	0	0.20
IBM Research	15.36	11.38	4%	2	0.33
Open Quantum Institute at CERN	14.74	10.72	0%	1	0.20

Cost-Weighted Signal Score = Σ (dimension weight × confidence × cost multiplier). Cost multipliers: high 1.0, medium 0.7, low 0.4. See the methodology for the full model and per-dimension grounding.