Metaverse platforms offer opportunity and risk for CIOs

In 2002, buying “real estate in an imaginary place” was a lyric from rapper Busdriver. Twenty years later, it’s a business model.

Decentraland, a platform for buying digital assets, lets investors acquire land in the metaverse, the much-discussed set of emerging virtual worlds that promise to become the next phase of the internet. In addition to its real estate angle, Decentraland this week will host its inaugural Metaverse Fashion Week, with brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Estée Lauder displaying their nonfungible-token-based wares.

What are CIOs to make of metaverse platforms? Is it a passing fancy or something they should monitor and, potentially, adopt?

Paul Daugherty

“There’s a tremendous amount of hype around it,” acknowledged Paul Daugherty, group chief executive for technology and CTO at Accenture. “It’s probably the most hyped technology topic we’ve seen in a decade. That creates a lot of confusion.”

Daugherty, speaking earlier this month at Accenture’s annual Technology Vision event, cited differing metaverse definitions as one reason for the confusion. The limited scope of consumer applications and a general perception that the metaverse is still half-baked also give many companies pause.

Businesses, however, should consider looking into metaverse today, Daugherty said.

“The metaverse is something for here and now — not just for tomorrow,” he noted. “The metaverse will impact every part of every business and it’s coming soon.”

A responsible metaverse?

But early participation in the metaverse isn’t strictly a time-to-market concern. Denise Zheng, lead for responsible metaverse at Accenture, cited the importance of diverse stakeholders collaborating through public-private partnerships and standards bodies to help virtual worlds emerge as trusted, secure and safe.

Denise Zheng

“Fundamentally, what we need to do is to ensure that the metaverse is responsible by design,” she said.

Responsible design involves several dimensions. To build trust, for instance, metaverse designers must build policies and practices that protect the privacy of users, giving them more granular control over what data is collected and how it is used and shared, Zheng explained.

To secure a virtual world, metaverse designers will need to deal with the challenge of authenticating a user identity on one platform and federating that across multiple platforms. Safety is another pressing issue, as the web shifts from text, images and video to real-time interactions via gestures and speech, Zheng said. “Moderation of harmful content and behavior is going to be so much more complex in the metaverse,” she noted.

Fundamentally, what we need to do is to ensure that the metaverse is responsible by design.

Also critical, she added, is incorporating well-being, inclusion, diversity and accessibility into metaverse design.

Staking a claim

There’s a lot to consider and, as Zheng noted, the metaverse has a “darker side” along with its potential for business transformation. But companies have an opportunity to design a virtual world worth participating in.

“It is your time to stake your claim in the metaverse,” Daugherty said. “Do you want to find yourself in a world, not too long from now, where the worlds and the ways that they operate were created by and for someone else and you’re just forced to operate in them? That’s the challenge you’ve got today.”