Welcome to the P.S. Metaverse Report
Making sense of the metaverse and its practical implications
Welcome to the P.S. Metaverse Report by Bob Pozen and Ben Shields.
The metaverse will be just as important to business and society as the World Wide Web and social media. We are still in the very early stages of this seismic shift on the internet. Join us to learn what you need to know.
We started this monthly report to make sense of the metaverse and its practical implications for you and your business. Subscribe today for three free months.
How the metaverse will take shape is an open, generation-defining question. And the stakes are high.
We are launching the P.S. Metaverse Report to monitor key metaverse news, trends, and issues and offer our analysis and insights into this dynamic area.
About Us
Leaders in our fields, we bring decades of experience analyzing, managing, and commercializing digital technologies. Bob was chairman of MFS Investment Management and president of Fidelity Investments and has served in several federal and state government roles, including as Chairman of the SEC’s Committee to Improve Financial Reporting. Ben was director of social media at ESPN. We both now teach at the MIT Sloan School Management, working with executives from around the world.
Defining the Metaverse
How do we see the metaverse?
Few words have received more hype over the last 12 months than metaverse. What, exactly, is it? Although there are many definitions in the marketplace, we view the metaverse as a digital world that is:
Immersive – Creates the feeling that you are immersed in a different environment, which may or may not require virtual reality or augmented reality headsets.
Unscripted – Allows you to create and follow your own scripts based on your motivations and the environment around you. This is different from following preset scripts, which is the norm in most games.
Interactive – Enables you to communicate with others in the same environment.
The combination of these three attributes is what separates the metaverse from other digital experiences already in existence. For example, social media platforms are unscripted and interactive but are not yet immersive. Most games are immersive and interactive but not unscripted.
We view immersive, unscripted, and interactive as foundational criteria for the metaverse.
Learn how they manifest in different products, services, and experiences through our newsletter. Subscribe today.
Five Big Metaverse Issues
We’ll be covering how these five big issues play out with the metaverse.
Demand: What do people want or need from the metaverse and related technologies?
Technology: What is the level of technical readiness and feasibility for the metaverse, both for hardware and software?
Business Models: Where is the money? What is the business model for the metaverse? How will stakeholders monetize it and do so profitability, especially given the high costs of metaverse technology?
Market Structure: Will the metaverse be a continuation of today’s internet, in which power is concentrated among only a few key players? Or will power and governance be distributed more equitably among stakeholders?
Social Impact: What will be the impact of the metaverse on society? If more people debated and acted on this question in the earlier days of social media, perhaps we would be in a better position as a society today than we are.
Get our insights on these metaverse issues and what they mean for you and your business.
Subscribe today and receive the first three months for free.