Virtual Spaces for Enterprise Collaboration

Braving New Worlds

Despite growing pressure by governments in various regions to return to the office, it seems likely that distributed working and ‘hybrid’ models will be a fixture of corporate life for the next several years. Even when we do return to the office, business travel will continue to be drastically curtailed: conferences and team gatherings will by necessity be increasingly virtual. If we’re going to continue to stay effective while apart, better technologies will need to replicate important in-person dynamics. 

The next wave of consumer technology to be absorbed by enterprise is likely to be the virtual worlds commonly found in massive multiplayer online games. You can start to see capital investment in this area through Microsoft’s recent $7.5 billion purchase of Bethesda game studio, UBS experimenting with a virtual trading floor, and the UK’s National Health Service trialling augmented reality glasses
to minimise the amount of time staff are spending in high-risk areas during the COVID-19 crisis. In specialised fields like scientific research & defence, the power to collaborate in exquisite virtual detail in AR & VR is already supercharging industry outcomes. These technologies are not new, but adoption inertia is being rapidly eroded through the long-term working pattern shifts we’re seeing as a result of the pandemic.

What topics will be addressed?

Virtual worlds, and more specifically the dynamics in virtual games, offer further benefits for teaching teams to collaborate more effectively. Specifically, we believe there to be benefits in three major areas:

• Team game play/strategy: building situational awareness through a shared environment, learning to communicate, and practicing collaboration in low-risk scenarios.
• Team development: reinforcement learning and practicing procedural learning in situations that are rare or dangerous in real life, scenario planning and opportunity to re-run experiments at low cost, building trust through collaborative activity, and learning mechanisms.
• Team building: developing non-monetary incentive models for motivation, developing mechanisms for accountability & responsibility, learning & personal growth.

From this research, you’ll be prepared for the market shifts that are coming to the enterprise collaboration tool suite. You will understand the organizational and behavioural changes that you’ll need to prepare your teams for succeeding in an increasingly virtual collaborative landscape.

If you would like to participate in this project, please contact us.