In 2021, Mark Zuckerberg shocked the world when he announced a major rebranding, reflecting a major shift in strategy for Facebook's parent company (then also known as Facebook): Meta was born.
At the Meta launch, Zuckerberg painted a picture of what the future might look like: a virtual reality headset that would allow people to reach virtual worlds where they can meet as 3D avatars, play games, attend events, go shopping, and maybe even go to work.
“We believe the metaverse will be the successor to the mobile internet, where people will feel as if they are with you, no matter how far apart you are,” Zuckerberg enthused in the announcement.
It's been almost two years since social media companies became “metaverse companies,” and the world is already seeing changes across the enterprise.
A number of brands, including beverage maker Coca-Cola, luxury fashion houses Gucci and Burberry, and car maker Hyundai, are building their own metaverse platforms that can be accessed in virtual reality with the option to buy virtual clothes, drinks and cars.
“I've been really amazed at how much headsets and VR are being used by businesses and companies,” Christine Trodella, vice president of Meta Reality Labs at Meta, told The Economist at its Enterprise Metaverse Summit. “The way companies are using this and the innovation they're doing is really amazing.”
From Meta's perspective, companies are leveraging the metaverse in four key areas: community, design and creativity, training, and as part of employee collaboration at the core of their business.
On the community side, Trondela adds, companies are using it to bring employees together for town hall meetings, Q&As and conferences.[They] We use it for collaboration and to bring people together across distances for meetings.”
“More and more companies are putting technology at the core of their business in terms of how they engage with their employees, how they use technology and how they engage with their consumers,” Trondela says.
One example of how companies are leveraging this technology comes from German tech giant Siemens, whose projects include an underwater greenhouse startup that uses VR headsets, digital twins and metaverse technology to “access” an underwater dome through virtual reality.
The startup, Nemo's Garden, uses sensors to monitor CO2 levels, oxygen levels and temperature, allowing it to monitor its undersea farms in real time.
For Trodella, the design and creativity of the Metaverse is what he likes most about the burgeoning platform.
“One car manufacturer has used 3D collaboration to reduce the time it takes to design a car from weeks to days,” Trondela says with a smile.
Learning and Development
Then there's the training aspect: “This is a fairly well-known and widespread use case.”
For example, in healthcare, virtual reality training that allows doctors to “touch” patients remotely is being developed by medical and technology experts at the University of South Wales.
This allows medical students to, for example, practice responding to injured patients, carrying out physical examinations or properly operating ultrasound machines to create scans – all completely remotely.
“Not only are we seeing effectiveness and efficiency, but we’re also seeing huge cost savings,” she adds.
This is especially useful for training instances where you can't put someone in a real situation, but you need to simulate it and react based on what they actually did, not what they saw or read.
“When you recreate a training case, you can't actually put someone in an individual situation, but by simulating it, the reaction is not based on what they saw or predicted, but what they actually did,” Trondela explains.
Another example that has recently attracted attention Tech Informed The UK Ministry of Justice is investigating using VR technology to train prison staff before they enter a real prison, preparing them for every aspect of the environment, including the smells.
To Trondela, early adopters of the metaverse will have the greatest competitive advantage, with Meta executives likening the coming explosion of immersive technology to the advent of the internet.
“A lot of companies were left behind at the time, but now many have formed metaverse teams with third parties,” she explains.
With Apple set to jump on the VR bandwagon with the release of its Vision Pro headset next year, the market could grow even further, something Trondella admits he's excited about: “It really legitimizes the sector.”
“We're starting to realize that this isn't just about adopting a use case, but it's a broader effort to embed it into every part of the business where employees are.”
