You put on a VR headset and are transported to a meeting room. Avatars of your coworkers greet you, each of them logging in from a different time zone. One of them has a presentation prepared, and she uses a virtual chalkboard to illustrate her points. Afterward, you all pop into a gallery to check out some new NFTs.
That’s the metaverse. Or, well, it’s a metaverse. One of the most important things to know about the metaverse is that it’s not just one thing. It’s a bunch of different persistent virtual worlds that today’s biggest companies are creating. Metaverses are all about immersive social connections in virtual space and they’re already transforming our social media experience. Their impact is probably most evident in online commerce — Fortnite skins, anyone? — but they’re also establishing a new paradigm for online transactions and collaborations. That makes it crucial for the leaders of tomorrow to understand metaverses and harness their power to radically impact the future. Let’s get to it.
What is a Metaverse?
So why is a metaverse not just World of Warcraft in VR? Well, metaverses are 3D digital representations based on the VR gaming experience. For example, multiplayer online games like Fortnite already possess some of the key elements of a metaverse as places where you can buy and sell digital inventory online using cryptocurrencies. And some top fashion brands also have gotten into selling virtual clothes within metaverse-adjacent spaces, like Ralph Lauren’s collaboration with Roblox.
But metaverses are more expansive than the standard online game. They allow players to log in using persistent identities and utilize these platforms to shop, work, or just hang out. Imagine a Fortnite world where instead of trying to outlast your friends, you can collaborate on a project together, hit up the mall, and get your kicks from some simulated skydiving.
Metaverse for Productive Meetings
Metaverses create vivid and more productive meetings for businesses through hightech 3D virtual reality headsets. Microsoft is rolling out a program known as Mesh which caters to Microsoft Teams, allowing for seamless online collaborations while making them more interactive and engaging. Metaverses help people connect through virtual reality, allowing for more relaxed and exciting conversations.
Create Better Understanding
Before industry leaders can completely understand the full realm of possibilities metaverses open for business, they need to get a handle on the digital tools that host metaverses. Facebook is designing a metaverse reality and is sure to profit from the user data it’s going to collect. At the same time, alternative options of the metaverse reality are being developed and decentralized, protecting the privacy and rights of users.
Companies Need to Create New Roles in Their Organization
Understanding the difference between “closed” and “open” metaverses is vital to grasping how fast online media evolves, changing how we work. Closed metaverses don’t allow content to move in and out. But the most effective metaverses will need to be decentralized and open, which means every company will have to analyze their business models to avoid business process disruptions. Organizations also have to consider how they intend to deliver value while protecting their clients’ intellectual property across the entire metaverse community.
Combining artificial intelligence with cryptocurrencies, digital platforms, and decentralized applications will drastically change the way organizations operate, creating a need for new business roles that don’t yet exist.
Importance of Scalable Enterprise Architecture
Before organizations embrace metaverses, leaders must first develop the platform vision. That means identifying the architecture and logic that best suit multiple digital platforms.Leaders should determine how these digital systems translate into a scalable and coherent architecture. Organizations will have to hire experts well-versed in metaverse ecosystems. It pays to find specialists with strong understandings of blockchain, computer vision, artificial intelligence, high-speed networks, data analytics, and quantum computing to lead your digital transformation endeavors.
Are Metaverses Dangerous for Personal Data?
A lot of people have concerns about extentensively mixing their social media profiles with their careers in such an intrusive manner. Since metaverses require analyzing personal data, it might feel like they’re infringing on your privacy.
Companies need to recognize how integrating metaverse into their digital worlds can impact their employees' morale, which means they have to demonstrate that all data from personal accounts is safe and secure.
Also, they need to invest in experts who understand how the metaverse platform works to ensure that employees don't complain of intrusive monitoring and controlling management strategies.
For these reasons, organizations are starting to look for metaverse analysts with backgrounds in artificial intelligence to perform more profound analytical decision-making.
An Immersive Workplace
While only time will tell how metaverses redefine work, we can already see the digital and physical worlds blurring. So, suppliers should bear in mind the technological flexibility and agility that the workplace demands — since these changes in tech use at work will ultimately impact how companies interact with suppliers.
Virtual reality is moving beyond online gaming as businesses look for ways to create virtual office settings. Metaverses offer solutions to some of the challenges company’s face in replicating personal interactions. Some companies are also looking to use digital tools like intelligent heating and occupancy monitoring in order to create more efficient hybrid work environments.
Metaverses Promise Engaging Collaboration Online
Companies can use metaverse technology to work and collaborate online in imaginative ways. Nonetheless, leaders should ensure this vision doesn't lead to burnout and privacy infringement. It's also vital to create measures to control employees' time in metaverse virtual worlds.
That said, hybrid work now becomes more than just a home-to-workplace split and allows organizations to achieve the ideal equilibrium between their physical and virtual worlds. HR departments need to develop new and improved working strategies to foster healthy metaverse integration practice.
Metaverses aims to create powerful canvases that enable companies to create new offerings for their customers. Artificial intelligence and virtual reality at the workplace present exciting options for employees to collaborate and work. As a result, organizations will flourish when they effectively engage a team of talented metaverse professionals. With metaverse integrations that focus on human connection with technological practices, organizations can build innovative cultures that encourage a more conscious approach to work.
Whether metaverses turn out to be utopias or dystopias, research is still vital at this early stage. Like any emerging technology, metaverse networks will become more meaningful as organizations start integrating the technology into their business practices. Above all, experts believe that metaverses offer huge opportunities for businesses if they combine them seamlessly into different departments of their organization.
