IMMERSIVE EDUCATION: THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS AND LEADERSHIP

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: