Today marks the start of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, or WEF23, in Davos, Switzerland. A record number of business and government leaders are expected to descend upon the Swiss mountain resort to examine challenges ranging from global economic slowdown to environmental collapse. While normally focused on global crises, this year’s agenda will also include discussion on the Metaverse.
The influential, and sometimes controversial non-governmental and lobbying organization, whose stated mission is “improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas", is expected to build on its “Defining and Building The Metaverse” initiative.
Launched at the 2022 Annual Meeting, the World Economic Forum’s “Defining and Building the Metaverse” initiative‘s aim is to “develop and share actionable strategies for creating and governing the metaverse”, and forum members, including leading voices from the private sector, civil society, academia and policy, have committed to recommending economic and governance frameworks for an “interoperable, safe and economically viable metaverse.”
The initiative focuses on two core areas: Metaverse Governance, and Generating Economic and Social Value. Metaverse Governance will focus on “potential governance frameworks for an interoperable, safe and inclusive metaverse”, similar to the work being undertaken by the Metaverse Standards Forum, whose goal is to create open Metaverse standards. The World Economic Forum appears to favouring the introduction of regulatory frameworks for governance rather than alternative, distributed governance structures.
Generating Economic and Social Value will focus on “solutions for generating economic and social value creation in the metaverse” as well as “mapping new value chains and business models across industries, and identifying use cases for economic opportunity”. The latter will be an important step in helping business and organizations understand the economic opportunities that come with the Metaverse, and how they can respond to take advantage of next iteration of the Internet.
Here at themetabite.com we a similarly dedicated to helping both public and private organizations navigate the Metaverse. We specialize in Metaverse awareness training, benchmarking, and roadmap development, helping organizations understand what the Metaverse means, where it's going, how it might evolve over time, and how organizations can benefit.
We’ll be returning later in the week with any Metaverse news coming out of this year’s annual meeting. Don’t forget to leave a comment below!
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