Second Life: The Business Case for HR

Second Life: The Business Case for HR in the Virtual World

Should I be worried about it? Should MY organization be there? Why would we?? What IS this?? Is it a game?? Who ARE these people that spend their time and MONEY there – and what the heck do they DO there? How is it different than MySpace or Facebook? Should I let my kids be on it? Should I let my EMPLOYEES use it? Isn’t it just a big WASTE of time? I heard someone made $1M in Second Life…say it isn’t so? Is it SAFE? Is it secure?

Sources: Business Week April 2006, The Economist. Living a Second Life, Sept. 28, 2006 Second Life is some unholy offspring of the movie The Matrix , the social networking site MySpace and the online marketplace eBay.

Tony O’Driscoll, aka
Wada Tripp
Duke University
Professor of the Practice, Fuqua School of Business

Source: Joe Miller. Linden Lab All Data: (Industry, Job Level, Company Size, # Learners Impacted)
16 Million Members
1.1 Million Active Residents
350,000 Hours of Use Per Day
87,500 Hours Development Time/Day
$1.6 B worth of Free Work per Year
163 Virtual Square Miles (5X Boston)
520,000 Unique Items traded/Month
Clearly if social activity migrates to synthetic worlds, economic activity will go there as well. Castranova

81% of the business population age 34 or younger are gamers
56 million are old enough to be employees
7 million are already managers in the current workforce
Sources: Merrill Lynch 1999, Beck and Wade, Got Game., Prensky, Digital Game Based Learning Digital Immigrants Digital Natives The new generation is huge, 90 million people in the US alone. Already there are more of them around than there are baby boomers. Beck and Wade

Source: e-Learning Guild

By the end of 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a “second life”, but not necessarily in Second Life, Steve Prentice Gartner Source: Gartner Consulting, IBM EBO

Dr. Robin Teigland, aka
Karinda Rhode
Stockholm School of Economics
Associate Professor
Photo: Henry Lundholm , Metro

What companies are striving for… Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. - Steve Jobs, Apple Our competitive advantage is our ability to attract talented people to collaborate and innovate together . - Aleksander Farstad, eZ Systems The goal is to always build a diverse group of people – good decisions are a result of diverse people coming together examining every point of view in a deliberate process and then making a decision. - Carly Fiorina The rate at which individuals and organizations learn may become the only sustainable competitive advantage , especially in knowledge-intensive industries. - Ray Stata, Analog Devices

While we know what to do…. Network picture from http://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?m=200712 Hierarchy Linear, static, process-based organization Heterarchy Dynamic, integrated collaboration networks … .getting there is hard to do!!

Communication still occurs primarily within formal silos Stockholm London Brussels Helsinki Madrid Copenhagen Teigland 2003 San Francisco

Creativity and innovation come from individuals spanning diverse networks Firm A High creative Low on-time High on-time Low creative Teigland 2003 High creative Virtual community Firm B

Two employees with the same number of contacts… B A

… but with very different access to resources B A

The challenge!
When people are more than 50 feet apart, the likelihood of them collaborating more than once a week is less than 10%.
Our networks tend to be homogeneous – we tend to develop relations with people like ourselves.
The higher the diversity of team members, the higher the potential for conflict and poor results.
Our biggest challenge!
Enabling our employees to live up to our motto of “share your information”
With people at 9 different locations
From 22 different nationalities
CEO, eZ Software (open source content management )
Allen 1984, Burt 1992, Marsden 1987, Ruuska & Teigland 2003

VWs help overcome these challenges Unilever uses SL to bring together individuals working with Dove across the world
Finding and connecting with people
Building communities
Sharing information and knowledge
Solving problems and finding solutions
Learning informally
Overcoming diversity challenges through creating collective competence
Shared understanding
Shared language, norms

External networks are growing in importance! Other people around the world Other employes around the world Other employees in your country Co-Workers Friends Large portion of new ideas and formal collaboration relationships come from external contacts You Alex Eyal Your manager Rami’s manager Hila Yaron Yuval Eduardo Ed Muriel Peter Frequent e-mails Infrequent e-mails Web 2.0 Collaboration

China is making big efforts in Virtual Worlds!
A “virtual economy district – a world where millions will work, communicate, and be in love”
Reaching out to the 150 mln overseas Chinese
7 million inworld at same time
Five virtual banking licenses
auctioned for $404,000
www.crd.gov.cn, www.foreignpolicy.com “ The real China is only a piece of land. We believe that there must be a China in the virtual world and the real world.” Robert Lai, Chief Scientist, CRD

HSB is creating tomorrow’s solution while attracting employees and customers today Building the house of the future in a competition with architecture students HSB: One of Sweden’s largest real estate management companies

So, what does all this mean?
Organizations have to develop their networks globally - both inside and out
Organizations have to leverage social media
To win the war for talent
To innovate for competitive advantage
Organizations have to cultivate an open, knowledge sharing culture
I f you love knowledge, set it free …

Chuck Hamilton, aka
Longg Weeks
IBM
Learning and New Media Program Manager - IBM 3D Internet Team

Convergence In Virtual Spaces mentoring Green Data Center SOA Training Play is how we principally learn and principally create " Ray Kurzweil many to choose from IBM Lotus Tools BMW Training Media Brain Thinking

Application across IBM’s HCM Lifecycle
Second Life Recruiting Center – Themed Zones, Education and Meeting Spaces, etc
3DI On-boarding and Orientation
3DI Learning Experience Spaces in Multiple Environments
3DI Business Rehearsal and Testing
3DI Virtual Career Portal
Virtual Workplace for Employees
Virtual Workplace for Employees
Career – Fast Forward Zone Meeting Space
Expertise and Event Collaboration

At your tables…
What potential applications of this technology do you see within your organization? What might it replace? What might it add that you don’t have now?
What obstacles do you see to venturing into this space?
What questions does this raise for you as you think about your job in 5 years’ time? What other questions do you have for our presenters?

Take 20 minute break … and come back for the panel

Steve Mahaley, Director of Learning Technology, Duke Corporate Education
[email_address]
Ace Carson in SL
Tony O’Driscoll, Professor of the Practice, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
[email_address]
Wada Tripp in SL
Robin Teigland, Associate Professor, Stockholm School of Economics
[email_address]
Karinda Rhode in SL
Chuck Hamilton, Learning and New Media Program Manager - IBM 3D Internet Team
[email_address]
Longg Weeks in SL
Thank You!

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Second Life: The Business Case for HR

by Robin Teigland on Jan 29, 2009

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Second Life: The Business Case for HR — Presentation Transcript