Virtual Worlds Knowledge

Abstract

Virtual worlds represent emerging phenomena that continue to proliferate through military, government, corporate, and non-profit organizations as well as tens of millions of households. In addition to supporting immersive entertainment and online social interaction, virtual worlds are home to myriad serious applications that are changing the way people think about and work in organizations. Understanding how knowledge flows influence and are influenced by these phenomena is important for harnessing the power of dynamic knowledge principles for competitive advantage in our current, technology-driven, and socially connected world. As discussed in Chapter 11, these phenomena have both technical (esp. involving information technology) and non-technical (esp. involving people and organizations) aspects, which come together, through the process, for productive and goal-oriented action. Indeed, the process is where the socio and the technical parts come together: how people in organizations employ technologies to perform goal-oriented activities. Because the process provides an action-focused interface between fast-moving technologies and comparatively slow-moving people and organizations, it governs the proliferation and change of emerging phenomena. As such, technologically enabled, organizational, knowledge, and work processes in particular are key to leveraging emerging phenomena for competitive advantage. In this chapter, the authors employ familiar principles for understanding and analysis of virtual worlds as emerging knowledge phenomena.