By: Nik Korba

A few years ago, the business world was abuzz about the metaverse. It was being heralded as an innovation that would transform the customer experience with immersive shopping and enhanced customer service. 

In the corporate space, the metaverse would take remote work to the next level, bringing significant gains to engagement and productivity. Overall, the metaverse was seen as the doorway to more efficient and impactful digital engagement.

Today, the news about the metaverse remains mostly buzz. While media outlets continue to report on the potential that the metaverse has for reshaping the business world, few organizations are embracing it in transformative ways.

“The business world has been slow at embracing the metaverse,” says Jaime McMahon, Chief Digital Officer of LineZero. “For many, it’s still a term that is cloaked in ambiguity.”

McMahon’s work at LineZero is focused on empowering organizations in a wide range of industries to achieve better culture, communication, and engagement through the effective use of digital tools. Connecting employees and teams through the capabilities of Workplace from Meta is one of the expert services LineZero provides to its clients.

Awaiting the emergence of practical applications

McMahon believes “mixed reality” is a better term than “metaverse” when it comes to the ways the new technology will most likely be applied in the business world. He points to a lack of practical applications as one reason for the slow pace of adoption.

“The development space needs to catch up,” McMahon asserts. “The business value of our phones comes from the applications that sit on them, rather than the phone itself, and the same thing is true in the mixed reality space. We need to see the development of critical applications, critical pieces of software, for mixed reality. Once they emerge and get ingrained in our personal lives, the trends will bleed over into the professional world.”

The recent emergence of the Apple Vision Pro could provide the type of forward momentum that McMahon mentions. The “Hello Apple Vision Pro” commercial doesn’t make a great case for business use, but it envisions a mixed reality where digital communication and engagement are seamlessly integrated into the natural world. Exploring that space in people’s personal lives could be the key to welcoming it into the work world.

“The Apple Vision Pro will bring normalcy to the technology,” McMahon says. “Donning the goggles to watch a football game is still a novelty, but with time it will become a normal thing people do, like putting on sunglasses.”

Recent advances in artificial intelligence — especially in the area of generative AI — also promise to make metaverse development more feasible. AI-driven tools can automate the expansion of metaverse environments and assist in providing automated engagement for those exploring the metaverse.

McMahon sees metaverse technology as serving as an optimal input device for human/AI interaction. “The goggles and other interfaces that have emerged in the mixed reality space can serve as a tool that lets AI see what you see and hear what you hear, which means our communication becomes virtually automatic,” he says. “That type of efficiency has a lot of potential for improving business operations.”

Bringing metaverse solutions to the business sector

As businesses await practical applications for metaverse tools, they can begin taking practical steps to foster their integration. This includes getting the right tech infrastructure in place and staying up-to-date on the latest trends.

“There needs to be some intentionality,” McMahon argues. “Businesses need to have a plan for leveraging the power of mixed reality and that plan needs to have some success criteria. If we don’t understand what success looks like, this will just be an experiment in technology that goes nowhere.”

Preparing employees for the experiences they will have in the metaverse is another critical step that should precede integration. Obtaining buy-in from the user base is essential to achieving success with technology projects.

“Mixed reality is a new way of doing things and we can’t just assume that people will embrace it and adopt it, even if we have the perfect use case and a flawless platform,” McMahon says. “There needs to be thoughtful change management that includes training, communication, workshops, champions, and all the other normal things that go into a change management program. Businesses that want to benefit from mixed reality must address both the tech and people sides of the equation.”

Recent developments in the metaverse space indicate businesses may soon have the tools they need to leverage the technology for better efficiency and profitability. Businesses that want to benefit early from the new technology should begin now to develop strategies for integration and implementation.

“Technology is converging in a way that promises to boost the development of the metaverse,” McMahon affirms. “The future is bright and exciting. It might also be a little scary, but we are just getting started.”

Published by: Martin De Juan