Leading a Second Life

Last December, IBM launched its Second Life complex of 12 "islands," where the firm openly collaborates with customers such as Sears and Circuit City. One of the IBM islands hosts the "Sears Virtual Home." There, visiting avatars can browse a three-dimensional showroom complex; customize their own virtual kitchens, garages, and home theater arrangements; and then link to Sears.com to purchase the items for in-store pickup or home delivery.

One area of PA Consulting's Second Life office features a prototype of an intelligent home of the future, which visitors can stroll into and experience. The firm is also developing prototypes for clients, such as a virtual branch bank, to help them collect feedback on which strategies and designs make sense to incorporate back in reality.

"We build things that go way beyond any traditional multimedia or Web communications experience," says Claus Nehmzow, a partner in PA Consulting's IT strategy practice. For now, anyway, both Nehmzow and Chapman are excited about the ways in which Second Life experiences and design will shape traditional Web sites. "The big vision at IBM is that the 3-D Internet can be a huge, explosive growth area in society," says Chapman. "And we believe that it will get created in an open, collaborative way."

IBM entered into Second Life for several reasons, including the fact that the firm's annual study of global CEOs identified collaboration as one of the most important and valuable innovation areas during the next several years. Chapman points to the gaming industry's explosive growth, noting that some forms of online games might serve as a model for how corporations can collaborate.

"One greeter is a Dutch housewife, another is a Japanese student, and a third is from the Philippines. We are essentially sourcing our
first-level support from the global labor market.
In some ways, this is the ultimate nondiscriminatory medium." — PA Consulting's Nehmzow

IBM and PA Consulting were also quick to notice that some of the world's most innovative companies were setting up shop in Second Life. Toyota, for example, uses Second Life to conduct additional market research on its highly successful Scion brand: The ways in which avatars customize their Second Life Scions with aftermarket add-ons sheds light on how actual Scion owners customize their cars in reality.

A Virtually Global Labor Pool

A curious Nehmzow ventured into Second Life on his own in March 2006. By August, he had noticed that a number of corporations were doing the same thing.

Nehmzow says that Reuters' establishment of a virtual press office, one led by Second Life Bureau Chief Adam Reuters, a veteran technology and media journalist, was the final trigger. "At that point," he recalls, "I thought that we should be ahead of our clients, certainly not behind them, in terms of understanding this type of technology."

Nehmzow received approval for a small budget, and by October, PA Consulting had opened up a Second Life office. While the firm's Second Life presence has two objectives — to establish complementary marketing and recruiting channels — Nehmzow emphasizes that the venture was "viewed as an experiment without a clear endgame in mind."

The firm hired London-based creative agency Rivers Run Red to design the virtual office, which integrates visual and architectural elements from PA's London headquarters, its technology innovation center in Cambridge, and other offices, including several in Scandinavia, where the firm has a large presence. The virtual space was designed so that PA consultants around the globe could see a touch of home in Second Life.

"We didn't spec this out as we would when designing a real office or even a Web site," Nehmzow notes. "In this kind of medium, you can afford to come up with some higher-level ideas, build something, and then refine it." Much of the collaboration between PA and Rivers Run Red took place in Second Life, where the designers' avatars could point to an element of the new office and the consultant avatars could examine it and then text-message their feedback and suggestions.

This approach paid off because it allowed for on-the-go adjustments to the design and then, later, to the way in which the firm operated its virtual office.

For example, PA Consulting's Second Life office was initially fully automated. Avatars could stroll in and click on buttons, which might launch a video or audio clip. One of those avatars entered the office and asked for a job as a virtual receptionist. PA Consulting hired her and discovered that "it is really important to have people in the space," Nehmzow says.

The firm has since hired more greeters, all of whom it found through references and advertising in Second Life, and complements its automated communications presentations with around-the-clock avatar coverage. All of the greeters are paid in Linden Dollars (L$), 250 of which equal about one U.S. dollar, according to the current exchange rate. The greeters, whom PA trains in Second Life, are just that: They welcome visitors, chat with them, and then steer them to the automated portions of the office where the visitors can learn more about the firm.

"We don't know who they are in real life," Nehmzow reports. "We think that one greeter is a Dutch housewife, another is a Japanese student, and a third is from the Philippines — but we don't know for sure. We are essentially sourcing our first-level support from the global labor market. In some ways, this is the ultimate nondiscriminatory medium because you don't need to know who these people are."

Nehmzow and Chapman are both thrilled by the new medium's collaborative potential, both inside and outside the organization. IBM's "Collaborative Jams" amass tends of thousands of IBMers who connect via the company's intranet to brainstorm on highly focused topics. The most recent session featured a group of IBM avatars collaborating on the same topic in Second Life. Some universities are also incorporating Second Life sessions into their classes.

Kingsbury's initial collaboration with PA Consulting in Second Life resulted in a full-time partnership. The Loughborough University graduate will start as an analyst in the firm's business operations performance practice in September. The virtual orientation he and some of his classmates participated in last December took place in a tree-lined sky box perched 1,300 feet above PA's Second Life office. A greater number of senior-level PA people attended the virtual recruiting session than could fly in for a traditional, in-person event.

Kingsbury says that the experience reinforced his impression of PA Consulting as an "extremely innovative and high-tech company." He also appreciates that he was able to interact with a wide variety of PA staff in an informal, anonymous atmosphere in which he could "ask all the questions I wanted to … and get real answers from real people."