Organisms act under real time constraints. The capabilities for information processing and control ultimately depend on how much molecular pattern recognition work can be performed subject to these constraints. The speed of complex formation is all important. The model developed in this article shows that the parallelism inherent in the electronic wave function speeds up the selforganization of the complex. The analysis suggests that all modes of biological self-organization — evolutionary, dynamical, and algorithmic- draw on the quantum speedup effect through their dependence on macromolecular specificity.