Industrial Metaverse: the autonomous business ecosystem paving the way toward Industry 5.0

We have not yet fully understood the Metaverse in its actual functions — aside from virtual reality — and some global players are declining the concept from the corporate perspective, raising more questions. But apart from the sparkling marketing activities of multinational corporations, let’s independently see what Industrial Metaverse means and what it could represent for our organizations.

I have already addressed the topic of the metaverse in a previous article beyond the user interface — the tool with which we will interact in the metaverse — to focus on the engine that will manage digital identities, ownership titles, and transactions. In my vision as a software designer, I always distinguish what is visible from what is not but makes the system work: in this case, blockchain and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

And even in the metaverse, declined for the business world, I will do the same thing: I will independently analyze the facts and then try to predict an approach that is functional, operational, and in line with a company’s objectives. Only in this way will organizations be able to exploit the potential of this new tool to stay on trend without losing competitiveness.

The differences with the ‘general’ metaverse

Before we get into the details, let’s look at how the metaverse changes when we approach the consumer model or interact as industries and private organizations. According to Deloitte research, the two metaverse models will converge into one symbiotic ecosystem where people can interact with both the industrial and consumer components — as they call it. To visualize the concept, I have crafted the following infographic — redesigned in my style from the Deloitte article.

The common element is the transposition of the physical world into the virtual world, the heart of the metaverse. Here virtual reality allows a dual role for people: to be producers or consumers and, sometimes, to combine the two positions and be producers and consumers simultaneously, or prosumer, an Anglo-Saxon neologism generated by merging the terms producer and consumer.