While working as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Nightlife Music, Sharan Nambiar realised he had reached a crossroads in his career.
“I felt like I’d hit a ceiling in terms of where I could go next. The question I was trying to answer was: do I jump to another company and do more of the same, or do I develop new skills and perspectives that could take me beyond being a technology executive?”
That question led Sharan to the UQ Master of Business Administration (MBA).
“I'd spent most of my career in technology, so I wanted to develop the business acumen and professional network that would open up a different set of opportunities.”
What Sharan couldn't have anticipated was just how different those opportunities would be. While the MBA changed the way he approached business and leadership, experiences in his final year would ultimately take him into an entirely new industry.
Today, Sharan is CEO and co-founder of QFactorial, an Australian quantum technology company developing optimisation software to help industry solve complex planning, scheduling and resource allocation problems.
From reshaping how he leads teams to building the network that helped launch QFactorial, Sharan shares the MBA experiences that changed the course of his career.
Applying MBA lessons in real time
One of the most valuable aspects of the MBA for Sharan was being able to apply what he was learning directly to challenges he was facing at work.
There was this useful feedback loop. I could analyse something that was happening at work through the MBA, learn different ways of approaching it, and then take those ideas back into the business and see what actually worked.
One example came while Nightlife Music was navigating significant organisational change following COVID-19. Through the MBA, Sharan was researching different organisational structures while the company was considering how its teams could work more effectively.
“Restructures are painful and change is hard," he says.
"One of the things I was learning was the importance of creating space for people to thrive and making sure those affected by change actually had some ownership of it.
“So rather than walking in with a new structure and telling everyone how it was going to work, I shared the research with the team. Some people thought it would work, some thought it wouldn't, so we decided to test some of the ideas on a small project and see what happened.”
That experience also prompted Sharan to reconsider his own approach to leadership.
“It was during the Leading People and Teams course that I had this sudden realisation that maybe I was part of the problem. I hate to say I was micromanaging, but in hindsight, I probably was."
“When you come through a technical career, you're generally programmed to try to be the person with the best ideas and the best solutions," says Sharan.
"You want to be the one solving the hardest problems. But when you start leading people, you can't be the loudest voice in the room.
“I started experimenting with stepping back. Instead of providing the answer, I'd give them more room to make decisions, make mistakes and work out how they wanted to solve problems themselves.”
The results changed Sharan's view of what effective leadership looked like.
“When I gave people more latitude, they developed more ownership," he says.
"When problems came up, they started bringing me ideas and solutions rather than waiting for me to tell them what to do. The quality of the work improved, we started achieving results we'd been missing, and people were happier in the process."
“That was a huge eureka moment for me. My job wasn't to have all the answers. It was to create the environment where other people could come up with them.”
From research project to deep-tech company
While the MBA transformed how Sharan approached leadership, it was a 13-week capstone project in his final year that ultimately changed the direction of his career.
The project paired MBA students with industry clients to tackle real-life challenges. For Sharan, that client was a quantum research group at CSIRO's Data61, who were exploring whether their research had commercial potential.
“None of us knew anything about quantum when we started out; it was completely alien to us," says Sharan.
"But by the end of the project, we saw so much potential in what we had been exposed to that I decided to dedicate the next few years of my life to seeing how far we could take it."
“The capstone introduced me to a network of investors, quantum researchers and the people who would eventually become my co-founders.”
That introduction became the catalyst for what would eventually become QFactorial, a quantum computing frontier lab focused on solving complex optimisation problems.
“When we started, we were 3 people with a piece of research and a belief that we could turn it into something much bigger," says Sharan.
"Since then, we've raised venture capital, grown the team, built the technology into a product and started working with Australian industry on optimisation problems.”
QFactorial has also received backing through the Australian Government's Critical Technologies Challenge Program, successfully progressing through both stages of the program to further develop and commercialise its quantum optimisation technology.
For Sharan, however, QFactorial’s story is about more than creating a single company. It offers an example of how Australia could get better at turning world-class research into Australian companies.
“Australia produces incredible research. The challenge is creating a pathway that can take an idea from a research lab, identify where it could create commercial value and support the development of a company capable of taking it to market."
“What happened through the MBA was a relatively simple idea," says Sharan.
"Researchers had developed something they believed had commercial potential, and UQ connected that research with MBA students who could look at it through a commercial lens. We asked: Who actually needs this? What problem does it solve? Who would pay for it? What would a company built around this technology look like?”
In Sharan's case, that process didn't end with a capstone report. It became a company.
“I think there's a much bigger opportunity in connecting Australia's business schools with our research ecosystem," he says.
"Bring commercially minded people together with researchers working on genuinely world-class technology and give them the opportunity to explore whether a company can be built around it.
“Not every project will become a startup, and it shouldn't. But if we can create more pathways for Australian research to become Australian companies, we have a better chance of retaining the intellectual property, jobs, investment and economic value created by that research here, rather than seeing promising technology commercialised elsewhere.”
Building the bridge to quantum computing
That commercialisation challenge is particularly important in quantum computing, where investment in hardware is accelerating but practical applications are still developing.
“There are billions of dollars being invested around the world in developing increasingly powerful quantum computers. But building the hardware is only one side of the equation. We also need to work out how we're going to use these machines to solve valuable real-life problems.”
QFactorial is developing hybrid optimisation technology designed to bridge that gap, solving problems on classical hardware today while developing algorithms that can progressively take advantage of quantum hardware as it matures.
“We don't want Australian industry to have to wait for fault-tolerant quantum computers to arrive before it starts preparing for them," says Sharan.
“We can work with companies on difficult optimisation problems today, create value using the technology available now, and progressively bring quantum computing into the equation as the hardware becomes capable enough to provide an advantage.”
QFactorial is applying this approach to optimisation problems across areas such as logistics, transport and resource allocation, where improvements in the quality or speed of decisions can have significant commercial impact.
“What excites me most is that we're no longer just talking about what quantum computing might be capable of one day. We're building the technology, putting it in front of real users and solving real problems. If we do this properly, Australian companies don't have to be spectators in the next step change in computing. They can be among the organisations helping shape how the technology is actually used.”
Looking back at where it started
For Sharan, the path from CTO to quantum technology founder wasn't something he could have predicted when he enrolled in the MBA.
“When I started the MBA, I was trying to answer a fairly simple question about what came next after being a technology executive," he says.
"I certainly didn't expect the answer to be building an Australian quantum computing company from research I first encountered through an MBA capstone project. I definitely didn't see that coming when I enrolled.”
Whether you want to accelerate your career, move into a new industry or turn an ambitious idea into a venture of your own, discover what's possible with a UQ MBA.
