Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/55470
Wikipedia. It was the first encyclo- pedia to exist in Swahili. That lack of a cultural resource is true for many languages around the world. It's pretty remarkable to think about the change and transforma- tion that's going on as knowledge becomes accessible to more people. What do you think business students should know about wikis? They should view them as practical and valuable tools for rapid col- laboration and knowledge sharing. In addition, they should realize that social information technology is flattening the hierarchy in compa- nies. For people just entering the workforce, this trend provides huge opportunities much earlier. But it also presents risks—they must use the information carefully. What is your message for business leaders? Most of the hierarchical commu- nication in a company is outdated, slow, and inefficient. Business lead- ers can't expect that when a plant in Idaho produces a report, it will just naturally bubble up through the management hierarchy and trickle back down to another plant in Minnesota. Peer-to-peer communication is much faster. A system of open com- munication helps employees share knowledge across the entire enter- prise. It's important to empower frontline workers, no matter what their field, to share knowledge with each other. One of the biggest things busi- ness leaders need to recognize is that within any business, good ideas can come from anywhere. They can come from inside or outside the company. Wikis provide a way for the best ideas to be circulated around the world. Are Virtual Worlds Good for Business? A multidisciplinary team of researchers from Indiana University in Bloom- ington and North Carolina State University in Raleigh has begun a study to determine whether online virtual worlds aid business col- laboration and increase corporate productivity. The researchers include Anne Massey, Dean's Research Professor and professor of information systems at IU's Kelley School of Business; Jeanne Johnston, assistant profes- sor of kinesiology in IU's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation; Mitzi Montoya, Zelnak Professor of Marketing Innovation at NCSU's College of Management; and Michael Devetsikiotis, professor of electrical and computer engineer- ing at NCSU's College of Engineer- ing. They will conduct the study with the help of a $203,549 grant from the United States' National Science Foundation. The quality of a virtual world is measured by the degree to which users feel a part of that world and by the richness of their interactions with others, a quality the researchers call Collaborative Virtual Presence (CVP). They plan to conduct a series of experiments that will help them develop a scale to measure CVP in a variety of circumstances and assess its relationship to performance. In addition, Johnston will mea- sure users' physiological responses as they experience virtual world environments. "In the real world, people can have physiological reac- tions, such as increased heart rate, to events," says Johnston. She wants to discover whether experi- ences in a virtual world produce similar responses. More businesses are logging on to worlds like Sun's Wonderland or Linden Lab's Second Life to connect geographically distributed employ- ees and experiment with marketing, product development, and group collaboration. Business schools are setting up virtual courses, campuses, and alumni events. It's important to know whether these efforts are worthwhile, says Massey. "Many unanswered questions remain, including whether virtual worlds improve the performance or the experiences of remote collabora- tors," Massey says. "Being able to measure and understand the role of virtual presence in collaborative processes is an important founda- tional step to assessing real business impact." BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2010 59