THE METAVERSE
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examples of luxury brands promoting themselves in the metaverse to signify how innovative their products are, or travellers using the metaverse to plan their trips. While for some this may seem far-fetched, there are countless examples of organisations already innovating in the metaverse. Most of us are familiar with London Fashion Week or Paris Fashion Week, but back for its second iteration in March this year was Metaverse Fashion Week. Luxury brands such as Dolce & Gabbana, Balmain, Coach and Tommy Hilfiger all took part – as well as digital fashion brand DressX. The company designs virtual fashion items to be worn by avatars in virtual worlds, as well as creating filters that real-life fashonistas can use on social media. embedded in the business world, how are management education providers responding? associate dean for digital at Neoma Business School Alain Goudey says, “The metaverse provides a sense of unity in terms of place, time and action. It is a hybridisation of what you have for real on a campus, within your physical environment, as well as a video-conferencing tool.” For Goudey, it is a way of connecting Neoma’s three physical campuses to create a shared learning experience for students. Neoma first introduced its virtual campus during the pandemic, using it to set up conferences, seminars and courses. The school also adopted it to facilitate extra‑curricular activities such as concerts, student association activities and photo exhibitions. Goudey has witnessed some exciting things happening in the metaverse that would have never happened in real life. He cites one particular highlight when he was able to have 50 undergraduate students on stage with him. He also noticed an interesting phenomenon during a case study in which some students were acting as start-ups while others played bankers or investors, with the aim being to create a roleplay that was as real as possible. The avatars who were role-playing the start-ups opted to wear stereotypical clothes such as jeans and a tee-shirt, whereas the bankers chose suits and ties. He observed that the students then began to act like the role their avatars were supposed to be playing. Biz ed in the mix With the metaverse clearly already being firmly For Goudey this is the magic of the metaverse – being able to customise education to make it more powerful and more engaging in terms of learning. “If you are using the metaverse to give a lecture, that is nonsense, you can do it on Zoom – you don’t need that level of technology. If you opt to use the metaverse technology, you have to think in terms of interactions.
hen Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021, for some this was their first foray into the metaverse. But it is not an entirely new thing: the word ‘metaverse’ was first
coined in 1992 in a sci-fi novel by Neal Stephenson entitled Snow Crash . From there, the arena where consumers would be most likely to have interacted with the metaverse has been in gaming, playing the likes of World of Warcraft , Second Life and Fortnite . However, game-playing and fantasy worlds are definitely not the only industries heavily investing in the use of the metaverse; all the big tech names, including Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft, are spending billions to create their own metaverse platforms. The video that launched Meta showed a seemingly futuristic vision of a student learning about the solar system by pulling Saturn towards them and spinning it around using their hands, then travelling back in time to ancient Rome to see a forum being constructed in front of them. According to the company’s chief business officer Marne Levine, “In the metaverse, learning won’t feel anything like the way we’ve learned before.” Whether the metaverse is just the latest buzzword or a truly transformative technology, the corporate world has responded to it and so, in turn, business schools have had to follow suit. Already, those who have grown up making virtual worlds in their spare time and who are familiar with the metaverse in a leisure capacity are entering the world of work. Ensuring relevance For Orsolya Sadik-Rozsnyai, associate professor of marketing and innovation at Essca School of Management, there is no point in just jumping on the bandwagon of new technologies unless there is a specific relevant use case. She says the role of a business school is “to prepare our students for how they will work with the metaverse because we are just at the start. What is important is letting students see the potential of this technology, so in their jobs later on in life they will be able to create this use case for it within their organisations.” To prepare students for the future of work, business schools have to keep abreast of what this potential might look like in years to come. Sadik-Rozsnyai already sees the metaverse being put to use in industry. She provides examples of organisations creating digital twins of their supply chains and factories to simulate how processes are carried out and test ways of improving efficiencies in a safe and relatively low-cost environment. She also cites
Ambition | MAY 2023 | 33
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