Today, Athena Alliance is releasing a new report, Virtual Worlds and the Transformation of Business: Impacts on the U.S. Economy, Jobs, and Industrial Competitiveness, by Dr. Robert Cohen. Virtual World sites now have millions of users. Total number is expected to grow to one billion by 2017. Enhancing the use of Virtual Worlds can transform how businesses operate and could help create high-technology, high-wage jobs to sustain American competitiveness in the global economy for decades to come. This is possible because collaboration in Virtual Worlds is likely to streamline and shorten design and testing of new products, improve training and learning, and provide important new ways to involve consumers in product design, performance, and after-sales support.
The report gives an overview of current uses of these collaborative enterprises in aircraft and car manufacturing, finance, retail and other applications. It explores potential evolutions in those uses to improve time to market, eliminate waste and speed design and processing times. The paper also examines the potential impact of Virtual World applications on transforming industrial structures, including the effect on traditional Information Technology structures and the creation of new structures such as "fourth wave" and "guild" organizations. It traces phases that will evolve in those new organizations. Obstacles, such as lack of strong legal frameworks, to further progress, and actions taken by other governments, including China, Thailand and Singapore, are spelled out.
The paper suggests a number of policy steps that could foster the development and utilization of these collaborative tools. Promoting the transformation will require policies that generate the following results:
• Heighten the awareness of business, labor, educators, and federal, state, and local politicians and authorities concerning the importance of Virtual Worlds and the collaborative enterprise to the economic competitiveness of the nation.
• Address the need for a technical infrastructure that can support Virtual Worlds and the collaborative enterprise and enhance the technology base of the U.S.
• Encourage corporations, business networks, and industry associations to adopt the use of Virtual Worlds and intensive compute resources.
• Provide economic development agencies with opportunities to work together to help firms and networks of firms adopt and deploy Virtual Worlds and intensive compute resources and that also help firms to insure their deployment and use in communities left behind.
• Assist business and government with identifying the measures that help firms and government agencies evaluate how well they are doing in adopting Virtual Worlds and intensive compute resources.
• Identify the education and training that employees and businesses will need if they are to successfully work as collaborative enterprises with Virtual Worlds and intensive compute resources.
• Promote the international collaboration of U.S. businesses with foreign firms through the use of Virtual Worlds and compute-intensive resources.
I am very excited and proud to be publishing this paper. It is not only a comprehensive guide to the state of Virtual Worlds today but also provides a blueprint for policy makers interested in strengthening the U.S. economy.
I hope you will find it of interest.
UPDATE:
You can access a recording of today's conference call releasing the report by calling (641) 715-3456 and entering the code 279849. The recording is 18 minutes long. Dr. Cohen's talking points are also up on the website along with the report at http://www.athenaalliance.org/apapers/VirtualWorldsandtheTransformationofBusiness.htm
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