This article is written by Isabel Wu from Meta Management and covers all things digital. Meta Management is a consultancy specialising in helping its clients with the organisational assets that drive effective digital transformation and create value in a hyper-connected, constantly changing world.
The metaverse. Fad or next business essential?
In simple terms, the metaverse can be described as a 3D digital environment. Think of it as a virtual replication of the physical world, only without the constraints of our analogue one. Buying and selling using cryptocurrencies, joining thousands of players in games like Minecraft, or living as an avatar in Second Life provide glimpses of the metaverse.
Large brands are betting big on the metaverse. The popularity of the game World of Warcraft prompted Microsoft to acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Coca-Cola has opened the metaverse to its customers, who can scan a bottle of the limited-edition Starlight flavour to enjoy an Ava Max concert in augmented reality.
Experts are often the first to make the easy mistake of dismissing technology along with the hype. Famous cases in point: IBM president Thomas Watson in 1943 (“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”); Techcrunch in 2007 making a list of smartphone feature’s stupid ideas (“We Predict the iPhone Will Fail”); and TIME’s 2011 dismissal of ecommerce (“Online Shopping Will Flop”).
Approaching digital developments for their utilitarian value comes from an essential misunderstanding of technology-driven change. It is not unusual for this misunderstanding to begin with a boardroom decision to do “something” because “everyone else is”, travel to the IT department, on to a functional area (marketing, often), then back to boardroom where hindsight is lauded and lessons are learned.
If forty-ish years of digital progress should have taught us anything, it is that when it comes to business, even the most revolutionary of technologies are never the seat of change.
Instead, it is the evolutionary value we should focus on and that determines whether a technology is a distraction or a game-changer.
Take the QR code. Almost 30 years ago, an engineer at Denso, frustrated with the clunkiness of barcodes, devised the now familiar arrangement of squares and dots. Unlike barcodes, QR codes can store large amounts of disparate information, scan from any angle and using any image-capturing device.
Marketers hated them. In 2012, Inc. called them “a dinosaur of marketing”. Business Insider agreed: “QR may stand for quick response, but it might instead be an abbreviation of quixotic response. So don’t.” Why use something so ugly and unexciting when there was social media?
That remained the case for the next 15 years. Then mobile phones came equipped with cameras plus a host of other apps and data could be stored cheaply in the cloud. These technological revolutions did not change the way we did business.
Fast forward to today and QR codes are indispensable enabling storage and transmission of data, tracking movements, conducting contactless transactions – and entering the metaverse. The evolution of an information ecosystem converged to change people’s expectations for information on demand and in multimedia formats.
Presently, we see only snippets of a nascent metaverse. Is this the beginning of a game-changing technology enabling us to move seamlessly between physical and virtual worlds, interact without the limits of time and space, and most significantly, where social and community engagement (such as co-creation, blockchain and collaborations) will dwarf the physical economy? It depends on how the ecosystem of technologies evolves.
If people believe being in two places at once, meeting in person when separated by circumstance, trying on clothes that have yet to been made, or amassing a portfolio of virtual property will enhance their lives, the metaverse will become to us what the smartphone has – a natural component of our daily lives.
The future is never written; it emerges from the actions we take today. We can shape it and prepare for it through small, inexpensive but useful projects designed for the metaverse. To be ready for an evolution, you must be part of it.
About Meta Management
Meta Management is a consultancy specialising in helping its clients with the organisational assets that drive effective digital transformation and create value in a hyper-connected, constantly changing world.
This article is also featured in Edition 40 of The Bugg Report Magazine
