Whitespace announces another collaboration agreement, this time it's with Sideways 6!
The adoption of the Metaverse by organisations and society as a whole is hotly under debate right now and it's certainly a topic that we at Whitespace are keen to get involved in from the early days. We have already been gearing up our own technology and experimenting with the Metaverse as a place to meaningfully connect and collaborate online.
I remember well a story that a senior innovation leader at a global Enterprise told me about when he was discussing with the CEO the company’s digital transformation strategy, to which the CEO said "just AI the sh*t out of it!" I smile at this as I think about the Metaverse and the column inches being put to it (and Web 3.0) as Enterprises wrestle with its relevance and application to their own digital transformation and business model evolution.
I saw very recently that Accenture was not only providing 60,000 VR headsets to their people, but had also developed an onboarding experience for their 150,000 new hires in 2022. I have to assume that Accenture is exploring new collaboration and productivity models with 60,000 staff. I will watch with great interest what these look like - especially as Accenture advises many Boards on their digital transformation journey.
At Whitespace we have been developing an Enterprise scale white label digital collaboration platform called the Shift Platform which we will be launching in the next month or two. Within this we have been experimenting with the Metaverse and how this "experience" could bring some incremental benefit to internal/external connections, collaboration and project delivery. What we have found is that our ambition is not matched by what the Metaverse technology can currently do.
Does that stop us in our tracks?
Absolutely not as that is the only way the technology can advance - have SMEs and Enterprises continually push the requirements to generate meaningful Enterprise solutions that solve problems that matter, generate new revenue lines or enhance existing revenues with new customer experiences. This is how the technology is advanced - by having the business requirements pull it along. In effect develop a solution that already has a problem, rather than develop a solution looking for a problem. As the old saying goes, “necessity is the mother of invention.”
Does it frustrate us?
Absolutely it does as we have to constantly compromise the actual customer experience we want to deliver. I am sure over the coming months we will share our experiences in creating new collaboration experiences within the Metaverse for the Enterprise and, I am sure, it will be a combination of transparent frustration being limited by the technology mixed with the excitement and potential of what it can be.
Then we get into the area of privacy, security, regulatory and policy, mental health concerns and economic opportunities with the Metaverse.
What next?
Within the Shift Platform launching very soon we have developed our own Metaverse within the space, now we have to take that step into using it in a meaningful way to help support a truly personal global collaboration environment, pushing the the current technical limitations and always keeping an eye on the ambition to create something that matters and is useful to SMEs and Enterprises.
Interested in exploring the Metaverse with Whitespace? If so, contact the blog author Andrew Webber [email protected]