Building synthetic worlds: lessons from the excessive infatuation and oversold disillusionment with the metaverse

Michael G. Jacobides, Francois Candelon, Lisa Krayer, Katie Round and Winson Chen

Industry and Innovation, 2024, vol. 31, issue 1, 105-129

Abstract: The metaverse comprises a range of technologies offering shared digital experiences based on immersive virtual worlds or decentralised economies. Brands, Big Tech, and investors made huge investments in the metaverse, but users did not share their excitement and the bubble duly burst. We explore this story by drawing on a wide range of data sources and first-hand knowledge. We consider the metaverse as a set of overlapping, partly competing ecosystems and expand the lens of industry architecture to Ecosystem Architecture to examine the rules, roles, and responsibilities involved. We find that incumbent firms rushed to embrace the metaverse in the hope of pre-empting disruption and safeguarding their competitive position, leading to over-investment. Greed among ecosystem orchestrators impeded contributors from creating value, while persistent technological shortcomings impaired the user experience. Our study throws new light on the dynamics of innovation and technology hypes and the challenges involved in cultivating and coordinating ecosystems.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13662716.2023.2279051 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:indinn:v:31:y:2024:i:1:p:105-129

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIAI20

DOI: 10.1080/13662716.2023.2279051

Access Statistics for this article

Industry and Innovation is currently edited by Associate Professor Mark Lorenzen

More articles in Industry and Innovation from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().