Harvard Business Review has tagged virtual worlds as “Breakthrough Ideas for 2008″ in its current issue (February 2008).

In its annual round-up of ideas that “capture 20 transformations at single points in their development” virtual worlds and related development, wide coverage is given to virtual worlds, including a spotlight on Second Life.

More commentary to follow, but briefly the issue includes the following topics:

The Metaverse as TV of the Future
Using Second Life as a specific example, one of their top trends paints a picture of virtual worlds as being a wave that may very well wash away the “traditional Internet” like TV did radio. Perhaps hyperbole, but they tell a compelling story of how “within five years, the dominant internet interface is likely to be the metaverse, a term used to describe games like Second Life.”

(Such a shame they used the word game!)

They recommend that businesses follow the lead of early adopters of other media in order to “experiment with the technology while it is still a sideshow”. They caution that “down the road, questions of infrastructure, software standards, and compatibility between competing metaverses may also dog regulators, who will have the additional difficulty of coping with these matters on a global scale.”

Alternative Reality as the New Business Reality
Large-scale collaborative games will shift towards being corporate operating systems that will “enable companies to build powerful collaboration networks, discover solutions to specific business problems, forecast opportunities, and innovate more reliably and quickly.” The authors propose that “alternate reality games” (or ARGs) will help companies build ten key collective intelligence competencies:
- Mobbability
- Cooperation radar
- Signal/noise management
- Protovation
- Emergensight
- Open authorship
- Influency
- Multicapitalism
- Longbroading
- High ping quotient

OK, I have no idea what some of these terms mean although can guess, and can also guess the author might have a consultancy on the side laden with meaningful sounding terms. But they use some specific examples that lead to the conclusion that ARGs will be the “go-to tools for launching internal initiatives, or will rally global teams of outside experts to engage in business forecasting” (amongst other benefits).

The Gamer Disposition
Points out that MMORPGs are “large, complex, constantly evolving social systems”. As such, they’re both enticing to players and a source of “workers of the future”. The five key dispositions of gamers make them ideal members of the workforce:
- Bottom-line orientation
- Understanding of the power of diversity
- Thrive on change
- See learning as fun
- Marinate on the “edge”

Giving Avatars Emote Control
Second Life is again given a lead along with There.com as an example of environments that will host increasingly subtle ways to express emotion through our avatars. They paint a continuum, from avatars that express directly based on brain wave activity to being able to “choose the veracity o our avatar depending on our needs in each interaction…(along a veracity continuum).”

“Personality programs will give avatars gestures and expressions that….are generated by the avatar, not the user….You will be able to outfit your avatar with a preferred affective style to keep in character – for instance “brisk and businesslike”.”

Nice to see such “hey, it’s a reality and it’s coming, let’s get excited” tone from HBR.