Every year businesses are dishing out millions of dollars to
figure out what the future will have in store for their perspective
company. Some aspects are predictable
for example having faster paced enterprises, and becoming more fiercely
competitive, also bridging the gap of communication by making more of the work
virtual.
Some would argue that leaders are born and not made. In the
past that idea could’ve held more weight. But there are some people who can
lead when given the right tools. In terms of online gaming, the players who can
organize, develop skills, and become versatile within the game have an upper
hand in the business world. Those skills are transferable because in a business
most people work with a team in order to tackle a project. Often there are a
few members of that team who have the ability to lead and more likely than not
the one person which the strongest personality will take the forefront. But
when it comes to certain aspects will have to take a backseat and let somebody
else lead. In online games people have the capability to learn how to take the
forefront and the backseat because they will encounter a task in which another
member will be better at.
“Corporate leaders must both coordinate and motivate
individuals who are separated by time zones and cultures”. IBM has noticed that
online gaming has plenty of similarities to the leadership model. Online gaming
helps eliminate a step for companies. Instead of having training on how to
better utilize different resources in different time zones, companies can
utilize the ever growing online gaming model. About 40 million people, based on
2010, already play online games and most likely will have already acquired
these skills of collaborating with people from all over the world. On their own
dime; so companies can save some more money because they have the ability to
hire employees with these skills and they don’t necessarily need to know it.
Based on a study that IBM did in Relevance of leadership behavior
they found that most of the criteria that they asked for landed at about 92%
relevant for corporate and about 70% for online gaming. Having those numbers
showed that “corporate behaviors are vital to leadership success within MMORPGs
and will be increasingly so within corporate environments.” Being in a virtual
environment means that there is no face-to-face interactions. With that being
said gamers have to build personal relationships with other gamers in order to
be successful in those environments. Depending on one of the aspects that IBM
looked at, was correlated to how they each played a role in games and in
corporations. For example evaluating and executing are both an important skill
for both games and corporate leaders.
This semester I played a few different games online in my
immersive education class. To learn more about what immersive education is
visit immersiveeducation.org this link will provide you with more in-depth
information about what immersive education is and what it is all about. Now
here are some pictures of me exploring and playing some video games online:
