There are currently 73 million online gamers worldwide, spending an average of 22 hours a week playing. Wasting time? Not according to new research by IBM and Seriosity, which asserts that there’s more than just entertainment to be found in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) like World of Warcraft. In fact, according to the report:
These players self-organize, develop skills, and settle into various roles. Leaders emerge that are capable of recruiting, organizing, motivating, and directing large groups of players toward a common goal.
Using the Sloan Leadership Model as a guide, the researchers found that all four components of the model — Visioning, Sense-making, Relating, and Inventing — were present in online game leaders. These virtual leaders “are able to make sense of disparate and constantly changing data, translating it all into a compelling vision.”
It’s well worth reading the full report, Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders, but, in a nutshell, the researchers believe that MMORPG’s “offer a glimpse at how leaders develop and operate in environments that are highly distributed, global, hyper-competitive, and virtual.” Sounds like a setting nearly any business exec can identify with, doesn’t it?
Hat tip to Dawn Kawamoto for sharing the report.
