IBM Gaming Report and iED Minecraft
As the technologies evolve, the business also needs to
develop in order to survive in this evolving, fast paced environment. While
businesses try to incorporate newly invented technologies and adopt these
skills and products to enhance their productivity, IBM in particular has been
researching the relationships between virtual worlds and real leaders believing
that “online games put the future of business leadership on display”. In both articles, “IBM Gaming Report: Virtual
Worlds, Real Leaders” and “IBM Report: Leadership in a distributed world –
Lessons from online gaming”, IBM addresses the current status of today’s
corporate environments and emphasizes on how new demands on todays corporate
leaders by globalization can be satisfied possibly by online games that
“provide a window into the future of organizations and the leadership
capabilities necessary to guide enterprises to success”.
Since the corporate environment is gradually increasing
globally, the business world also transforms to more risky, fast paced, and
competitive environment. Hence, it is crucial to find or shape corporate
leaders who are suitable in such transitions in the future. In the article,
“IBM Gaming Report: Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders”, IBM raises important
questions to be researched: “what new skills and competencies will leaders need
to succeed in work environments that are increasingly virtual and distributed?
– As the business world becomes more distributed and virtual do online games
offer lessons on the future of leadership?”
It is very important to recognize that there are millions of
people using and interacting virtually and its increasing use in highly complex
virtual environments – in particular, gaming industry. The studies suggests
that virtual gaming like MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing
games) displays and reflects many criteria and aspects that are similar to
being a leaders in corporate environment. Through such games, gaming leaders
can develop skills, communicate, form groups and guilds, and create transparent
skills and information, all in which are necessary in a corporate setting. Also,
it is understood that by practicing through virtually, players can become more
risk-takers. The research by IBM and MIT states that qualities find in online
games can facilitate leadership skills and hence provides similarities in both
environments: bringing large number of people through virtual environments,
role-playing makes each player more responsible according to their each role
and goal, works with incentives to gain motivation, transparent capabilities of
each players, importance of collaboration, and providing better and more
communication methods.
IBM’s research has shown that among 200 gamers in IBM’s own
internal gaming community that participated in a survey, almost half believe
that game playing is improving their “real world” leadership abilities and that
three quarters of players declared that the “techniques and approaches found in
online games could enhance their leadership effectiveness in the workplace”. Moreover,
the incentive systems that are used in online games develops the trust between
players through the transparency of information, in which eventually results to
more confidence and better and faster decision making skills of developing
leaders. Eventually, through their model, they came down to four main qualities
of being a leader – visioning, evaluating, collaborating, and executing, all in
which are necessary leadership behaviors demonstrated in both gaming and
corporate environments.
The studies conducted by the two professors from Stanford
University and MIT find out that the communication in changing corporate
environment is key relationships within and across organizations – similarly,
online gaming encompasses and utilizes the multiple levels of communication
methods in which can enhance the real life skills recommended in business
sectors.
Although I am not a frequent game player, I have played a
few widely known games throughout my lifetime, but I have never thought about
gaming environment that could help in becoming leaders in today’s corporate
environment. Thus, it was very interesting to see in this perspective and that
this studies has been going on in many years ago. Although I am not a fan of
RPG games, I now can understand and believe how online games particularly
MMORPG can be visualized and used to enhance the capabilities in becoming
corporate leaders.
Reference
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxtPKBbmQcuuSmU2NVJjNnNlTmM/edit
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxtPKBbmQcuuZ2V4U0p2a2l4Snc/edit
This is an assignment from the Immersive Education course that I am taking at Boston College. The course is called Collaborative Computing. For details, visit the immersive BC portal at http://ImmersiveEducation.org/@/bc
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