Archive for the ‘arvetica’ Category

Feb 8, 2007

Second Life for Businesses – brainstorming session at Arvetica

Alexander Osterwalder

Yesterday I facilitated a brainstorming session on the topic “Second Life for Businesses – fad or business asset?”. The event was part of the LIFT’07 conference, but was organized and hosted at Arvetica. To reflect on “fad” or “business asset” we split the 20 participants into three groups in order to write the storyboard for two scenarios:

Scenario A – Dec, 2008: In an interview with the Financial Times (FT) Sam Palmisano (CEO, IBM) explains to the newspaper why they fell for the Second Life fad and lost 85 mio USD of investment in the process…

and

Scenario B – Dec, 2008: The Financial Times (FT) publishes an article stating that Second Life is business as usual and that 85% of all Fortune Global 500 companies have established a major Second Life presence…

At the end all participants voted if Second Life (or virtual worlds in general) was a fad or a potentially important business asset. Have a look at the slides to find out about the results.

The event was quite fun and the 20 participants seemed to enjoy the thinking. You can download the full set of slides here (12mb because of full-sized workshop photos)

ATTENTION: At Arvetica (the consulting boutique I work for) we will soon organize and host a 2 day workshop on “Second Life Immersion for Executives and Marketing Professionals”. This event will help business people “live” and understand Second Life and get a feel for the potential business models. Send us an email if you want to be informed about this workshop.

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Feb 4, 2007

The Architecture of Banking – Visiting Jeffrey Huang's Class at EPFL

Alexander Osterwalder

Last Friday I was invited to Professor Jeffrey Huang’s class on “The Architecture of Banking” to comment on his students’ projects at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). The students explored a variety of different types of banks to match them with suitable concepts of space and architecture. I wrote a full blogpost about the projects that ranged from a “private bank in Second Life” all the way to a “peer-to-peer bank” on arvetica’s website.

During this event at the EPFL I also used my new Logitech io Personal Digital Pen more consequently for the first time. It allows me to upload the notes I write into a notebook directly to my laptop. Below you see one of the sketches I made during the students’ presentation on the Swiss online bank Swissquote. I briefly outlined the dichotomy between online discount brokerages and physical private banks…


I’m definitely going to use this pen more often. It’s amazing!

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Jan 26, 2007

Second Life for Businesses – arvetica workshops

Alexander Osterwalder

I’ve been silent for a while because I explored Second Life….For those who don’t know what it is: it’s a parallel virtual world that you can dive into in the form of an avatar (see wikipedia definition). Today, for example, I was at the virtual World Economic Forum WEF to listen to EasyJet founder.

Various businesses have established a presence there, such as IBM, Adidas, Reuters, Toyota (see video below for the Scion that was launched in Second Life) etc.

Because it’s quite a hot phenomena we are organizing a short free presentation at arvetica on March 1, 2007 to discuss what companies may get out of Second Life. Register if you’re in Geneva. We are also hosting a workshop at the LIFT conference on February 7 in the afternoon. However, most important: I will later announce a 2-day immersion workshop at arvetica where business people and marketers can really look into the potential of Second Life. Contact me if you want more info or pre-reserve for the limited seats…

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