In April 2025, Professor Francesco Derchi from the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT) and Chair of OPIT’s Digital Business programs entered the online classroom to talk about the current state of the Metaverse and what companies can do to engage with this technological shift. As an expert in digital marketing, he is well-placed to talk about how brands can leverage the Metaverse to further company goals.

Current State of the Metaverse

Francesco started by exploring what the Metaverse is and the rocky history of its development. Although many associate the term Metaverse with Mark Zuckerberg’s 2021 announcement of Meta’s pivot toward a virtual immersive experience co-created by users, the concept actually existed long before. In his 1992 novel Snow Crash, author Neal Stephenson described a very similar concept, with people using avatars to seamlessly step out of the real world and into a highly connected virtual world.

Zuckerberg’s announcement was not even the start of real Metaverse-like experiences. Released in 2003, Second Life is a virtual world in which multiple users come together and engage through avatars. Participation in Second Life peaked at about one million active users in 2007. Similarly, Minecraft, released in 2011, is a virtual world where users can explore and build, and it offers multiplayer options.

What set Zuckerberg’s vision apart from these earlier iterations is that he imagined a much broader virtual world, with almost limitless creation and interaction possibilities. However, this proved much more difficult in practice.

Both Meta and Microsoft started investing significantly in the Metaverse at around the same time, with Microsoft completing its acquisition of Activision Blizzard – a gaming company that creates virtual world games such as World of Warcraft – in 2023 and working with Epic Games to bring Fortnite to their Xbox cloud gaming platform.

But limited adoption of new Metaverse technology saw both Meta and Microsoft announce major layoffs and cutbacks on their Metaverse investments.

Open Garden Metaverse

One of the major issues for the big Metaverse vision is that it requires an open-garden Metaverse. Matthew Ball defined this kind of Metaverse in his 2022 book:

“A massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communication, and payments.”

This vision requires an open Metaverse, a virtual world beyond any single company’s walled garden that allows interaction across platforms. With the current technology and state of the market, this is believed to be at least 10 years away.

With that in mind, Zuckerberg and Meta have pivoted away from expanding their Metaverse towards delivering devices such as AI glasses with augmented reality capabilities and virtual reality headsets.

Nevertheless, the Metaverse is still expanding today, but within walled garden contexts. Francesco pointed to Pokémon Go and Roblox as examples of Metaverse-esque words with enormous engagement and popularity.

Brands Engaging with the Metaverse: Nike Case Study

What does that mean for brands? Should they ignore the Metaverse until it becomes a more realistic proposition, or should they be establishing their Meta presence now?

Francesco used Nike’s successful approach to Meta engagement to show how brands can leverage the Metaverse today.

He pointed out that this was a strategic move from Nike to protect their brand. As a cultural phenomenon, people will naturally bring their affinity with Nike into the virtual space with them. If Nike doesn’t constantly monitor that presence, they can lose control of it. Rather than see this as a threat, Nike identified it as an opportunity. As people engage more online, their virtual appearance can become even more important than their physical appearance. Therefore, there is a space for Nike to occupy in this virtual world as a cultural icon.

Nike chose an ad hoc approach, going to users where they are and providing experiences within popular existing platforms.

As more than 1.5 million people play Fortnite every day, Nike started there, first selling a variety of virtual shoes that users can buy to kit out their avatars.

Roblox similarly has around 380 million monthly active users, so Nike entered the space and created NIKELAND, a purpose-built virtual area that offers a unique brand experience in the virtual world. For example, during NBA All-Star Week, LeBron James visited NIKELAND, where he coached and engaged with players. During the FIFA World Cup, NIKELAND let users claim two free soccer jerseys to show support for their favorite teams. According to statistics published at the end of 2023, in less than two years, NIKELAND had more than 34.9 million visitors, with over 13.4 billion hours of engagement and $185 million in NFT (non-fungible tokens or unique digital assets) sales.

Final Thoughts

Francesco concluded by discussing that while Nike has been successful in the Metaverse, this is not necessarily a success that will be simple for smaller brands to replicate. Nike was successful in the virtual world because they are a cultural phenomenon, and the Metaverse is a combination of technology and culture.

Therefore, brands today must decide how to engage with the current state of the Metaverse and prepare for its potential future expansion. Because existing Metaverses are walled gardens, brands also need to decide which Metaverses warrant investment or whether it is worth creating their own dedicated platforms. This all comes down to an appetite for risk.

Facing these types of challenges comes down to understanding the business potential of new technologies and making decisions based on risk and opportunity. OPIT’s BSc in Digital Business and MSc in Digital Business and Innovation help develop these skills, with Francesco also serving as program chair.

In April 2025, the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT) invited Professor Andrea Gozzi, Head of Strategy at Partnership for the Digital Industries Ecosystem at Siemens, Italy, to talk about how new technologies are transforming industry.

Industry Is Driving Technological Innovation

According to Gozzi, who teaches in the OPIT BSc in Digital Business and MSc in Digital Business and Innovation programs, many of the young people he meets imagine that the development of technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) is being led by digital companies like Amazon and Apple. But, he adds, they haven’t really considered how industry is utilizing and leading in these fields.

Industry includes markets such as energy, aviation, and manufacturing. Gozzi explains how new technologies are transforming these industries and, in turn, how these industries are pioneering new technologies. As a result, industry represents a growing job market, especially for OPIT graduates.

Challenges to Industry

Gozzi started his discussion by explaining the modern challenges facing the industry today and how these challenges necessitate innovation. He identified three principal challenges:

• Geopolitical instability events like the war in Ukraine and changing tariffs are undermining supply lines, complicating contracts, and making sales unpredictable.
• Labor shortages are being caused by changing demographics and changing culture. Gozzi explained that in the past, people worked for one company for their entire lives, learning specialist skills and adding value throughout their working lives. Today, people tend to change jobs several times throughout their working lives, so to maximize their value, they need to be brought up to speed quicker, and companies need strategies to retain knowledge despite labor churn.
• Sustainability pressures are on the rise both in terms of meeting green regulations and ensuring that expensive factories provide a long-term return on investment.

To adapt to these challenges, industry is looking to develop innovative technological solutions.

Opportunities: AI, Digital Twins, Industrial IoT, and Robotics

Having set the scene, Gozzi dove into the types of technologies that industry is pioneering to adapt to challenge, and how they are pushing these technologies beyond their mainstream potential.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Gozzi explained how AI promises to be an industry game changer, especially in the quest to go from automated to adaptive manufacturing. Automated manufacturing can create products based on existing programming, recreating the same product perfectly every time while eliminating human error.

But the goal is to create machines that don’t just create one thing but can create anything, adapting as designs change. Adaptive manufacturing is one of the core goals of Industry 4.0, which is the next Industrial Revolution that is seeing automated, interconnected factories. Gozzi shared a compelling example of applications by Rolls-Royce for airplane engine production.

AI powers machines to handle more complex tasks independently, which requires them to be networked and connected. As a result, factories can collect data from every area and use it to optimize supply chains and resource allocation. This enables predictive maintenance, reducing downtime by around 50%, and scheduling activity, reducing yield losses by around 40%. Since factories represent major investments, maximizing productivity is essential to achieving a strong return on investment (ROI).

This same data is increasingly being used to iterate and test prototypes in the digital twin environment.

Digital Twins

According to Gozzi, today’s factories are created with intelligent interconnected machines that are adaptable and extendable and can provide strategic insights. The entire manufacturing system is connected by silent threads of information that can turn siloed data into a much larger picture.

These threads form the neural network of digital twins, which are virtual replicas of physical systems that can be used to monitor and optimize operations, simulate actions before execution, and accelerate innovation. New production techniques and designs can be tested virtually before being tested in the real world, allowing processes to be optimized for quality and efficiency. Here, Gozzi shared a compelling example from Siemens’ accelerator ecosystem which creates replicas of factories in the metaverse.

IIoT and Robotics

In the factories themselves, manufacturers rely on advanced robotics connected by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) to carry out tasks independently. IIoT ensures that a centralized intelligence integrates every element of production in real-time. This not only allows robots to do their jobs but also ensures that issues can be identified and solutions executed through the digital twin. The digital twin can also be used to teach robots new tasks tested and piloted virtually in the digital twin.

Meanwhile, robots must be mobile, AI-driven, and integrated into the factory’s ecosystem. It is AI that has enabled robots to become aware of their environment, enabling new behaviors such as picking pieces from a non-uniform set and placing them where they are required. This may seem small, but it is something that robots have never been able to do and represents one of the biggest recent breakthroughs in manufacturing.

AI is also enabling robots to safely work alongside human workers in manufacturing settings. These collaborative robots, called “cobots,” are another recent development that promises to be transformative.

Cybersecurity

Gozzi explained that all this requires advanced connectivity and a closed network with a “zero trust” architecture to mitigate security threats. Hackers, viruses, and other network failures don’t just represent the potential loss of valuable and confidential data, but also a major safety risk if cobots are interfered with and begin to act unsafely.

Powerful and secure industrial closed networks are being enabled by 5G, but these networks still need to be monitored by cybersecurity continuously in real-time.

The Future of Industry

Industry is modernizing quickly, and technology is playing an increasingly important role. This is manifesting in the development of smart adaptive factories using a mix of AI, advanced robotics, and digital twins. Industrial IoT, strong connected networks, and advanced cybersecurity support this. The demand for talent that understands these technologies and their applications will only increase in the coming years.

Moreover, Gozzi reassures students that there is no question that technology will replace real people in some positions. Humans will still be needed to collaborate and work side by side with robots. This will require people to learn new skills, in particular, a data-driven mindset and approach to problem-solving.

Both OPIT’s BSc in Digital Business and MSc in Digital Business and Innovation are designed to prepare students for these kinds of careers.

Source:

• Il Sole 24 Ore, published on April 14th, 2025

Expert Pierluigi Casale analyzes the adoption of AI by companies, the ethical and regulatory challenges and the differentiated approach between large companies and SMEs

By Gianni Rusconi

• Il Sole 24 Ore

Source:

• CCN, published on March 29th, 2025

By Kurt Robson

• CCN

Source:

• People & Change 360, Published on January 20th, 2025.

Today, organizations are facing increasing pressure to achieve immediate results, often at the expense of a long-term vision. The ongoing economic uncertainty, fueled by stress, anxiety, global conflicts and technological evolution, seems to push many companies to focus only on short-term profits. However, a concept that could radically change the perspective on business is emerging with force: corporate purpose. Fuelling this debate, more and more professionals and experts who see in the definition of a purpose not only an ethical value, but a real strategic lever to improve corporate competitiveness.

Public debate about a company’s ultimate purpose increased fivefold between 1995 and 2016. Recent research finds that corporate purpose is no longer just a statement of intent, but a guiding principle that can shape operations, define corporate culture, and even positively impact bottom lines.

Historically, companies have always had a clear “reason for being,” often recognized and granted by governments. Their existence was not limited to immediate profit, but responded to a social mandate: to generate value for the community. This concept, which has its roots in the industrial revolution and even in the Roman Empire, has been lost over time, replaced by the logic of maximizing short-term profit.

Why Corporate Purpose Matters More Than Ever

Some experts, however, believe that the time has come to return to a model that places purpose at the center of corporate strategy, without sacrificing profitability. This does not mean denying the need for economic results, but reorienting the company towards a broader objective, which integrates ethics and sustainability. The challenge, therefore, is to find a virtuous model that allows companies to reconcile profits and social responsibility.

Purpose as a strategic lever for business success

Several studies converge on similar data: companies that act consistently with a clear objective outperform the market by 42%. On the contrary, the simple definition of a purpose, without a real integration into daily practices, does not lead to significant results. Finally, companies without a purpose show a lower performance of 42%.

In terms of valuation, over a 12-year period, companies driven by a clear purpose have seen a 175% increase in brand value, compared to an average growth rate of 86% ( source: BCG BrightHouse). This trend is also reflected in consumer behavior: 88% prefer to buy products from companies driven by a clear purpose rather than from companies without a clear direction.

Read the full article below:

• People & Change 360

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, most businesses viewed digitalization as only an additional avenue for marketing their products or services. In the post-pandemic world though, digitalization has become the very lifeblood of survival for these businesses.

But implementing an efficient digital business strategy is no easy task. After all, a digital transformation calls for fundamentally reshaping how a business operates.

However, one look at what technology can do for you and your business is enough to make you understand that the complex digital transformation process is well worth it. If all of this is new to you, don’t worry. You can master all the necessary digital skills to reap the benefits of digitalization by completing the Open Institute of Technology’s Bachelor’s Degree in Digital Business. Alternatively, you can further your skills with the Institute’s Master’s Degree in Applied Digital Business.

Without further ado, let’s discuss eight genuine benefits of embracing digitalization and implementing digital business strategies.

1. Data-Driven Decision-Making

Efficiency. Innovation. Sustainable success. These desirable outcomes can only be reached with data-driven decision-making. While traditional decision-making mostly relies on experience, modern data-driven decision-making leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze vast amounts of data swiftly and accurately.

Of course, artificial intelligence brings much more to the corporate world beyond data analysis. This innovative technology can automate administrative tasks, provide instant customer responses, and enhance overall operational agility. All of these make managerial and business decisions and processes significantly faster.

That’s precisely why OPIT’s study programs feature courses dedicated to artificial intelligence in the business setting, from a general introduction to AI principles in the digital economy. The goal of these courses is simple – help you understand why, how, and when to use AI in business decision-making and beyond.

But as powerful as AI is, you can’t solely rely on technology in your decision-making process. AI is only there to help you make this process more comprehensive and strategized. This technology will also help you spend less time on mundane, control-based tasks, allowing you to focus on your judgment, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

Luckily, all of these skills are also covered by various Digital Business courses at OPIT, allowing you to become the best digital-era manager and decision-maker you can be.

2. Faster Time to Market

All the invaluable data gathered by artificial intelligence and other digital tools can also do wonders in the research and development department. With so much data at hand, businesses should have no trouble improving their existing products or services or launching new ones.

The latter process is especially important as the time it takes for a product to go from conceptualization to market availability can be rather lengthy. But what used to take months or years can now be done in weeks, days, or even hours, all thanks to digitalization.

Businesses can rely on modern technologies to rapidly test, pilot, iterate, and launch new products and services, significantly enhancing their agility in the ever-evolving business world. And hey, if a product or a service doesn’t quite work, you’ll be able to tell this almost immediately through online feedback and product reviews.

Using these valuable insights, businesses can revise their offerings to suit their customers’ preferences, needs, and interests. The result? Nothing but product excellence and customer satisfaction.

3. New Sales Channels

Dominating the business world is all about finding new ways to reach, engage, and retain customers. The good news? The digital-age business world offers seemingly endless opportunities to do this. You just need to know where to look.

Granted, your job doesn’t stop when a new channel is identified. Rather, it transforms. Now, it’s up to you to know how to use that channel effectively. To do so, you’ll need to learn about digital business models, as virtually every sales channel has a dedicated one.

Arguably, the most important thing to cover is how digital business models differ from traditional models (especially if you’ve only ever worked with the latter). And that’s precisely what OPIT’s “Digital Business Models” module covers.

You’ll learn just how vital online platforms, e-commerce, and digital marketing are in shaping modern business strategies. Use this knowledge to successfully tap into new markets and connect with a broader audience.

Naturally, there’s one online channel that’ll play critical role here – social media. Luckily for business owners and managers, most customers are active on at least one social media platform, essentially making the global population a prospect for sales.

4. Increased Market Share

For most businesses, the ultimate goal is to boost revenue, improve bargaining power, and strengthen competitive position. First step? Capturing a more substantial portion of the market. Fortunately, doing so is much easier now that most of the global population is within reach through digital business strategies.

So, it’s no wonder digital transformation has become essential to growing a brand. This process facilitates everything you need to establish a robust market presence – better financial performance, media activity, and advertising capabilities.

Best of all? You can use digital business strategies to only boost your market share or completely dominate your industry. It’s all up to you and how you harness the power of digitalization.

That’s why OPIT’s Applied Digital Business program contains a course titled “Maximizing Impact in the Digital Economy.” From gradual scaling to growth hacking, this course equips you with the insights and skills needed to ensure sustained success in virtually any industry.

5. Better Customer Interaction

Reaching and retaining new customers are equally important. But how can you do this? By ensuring most (if not all) of their interactions with the business are positive, of course. Naturally, digital transformation can help in this regard as well.

After all, the digital environment offers countless possibilities for improving the customer relationship with a brand. From streamlined online transactions to personalized communication through various digital channels, there’s virtually no area of the customer experience that digital transformation can’t positively impact. With this process, it’s all about simplicity, real-time services, and tailored experiences. And there’s hardly a customer that doesn’t love these things.

Granted, many (digital) elements are involved in achieving this desirable outcome, including artificial intelligence, automation, and digital marketing. But don’t worry; the OPIT’s programs extensively cover each element.

Take digital marketing as an example. Whether you’re interested in gaining an understanding of the key concepts of this dynamic field or delving into advanced strategies, there’s a module tailored to your needs.

6. Real-Time Transactions

As previously mentioned, customers love real-time services. In the past, this was hardly possible, as businesses were limited by time and infrastructure constraints. But not anymore. With digital tools, the 24/7 concept becomes a reality.

Customers can look at business offerings and make a purchase at any time of the day or night, breaking free from the traditional constraints of operating hours. All they need is a few clicks, and voilà – their transaction is complete.

This is made possible by innovative technologies like Blockchain, which dramatically enhances transaction speed while minimizing costs and any chances of fraud. Of course, this also means that this technology is covered by OPIT’s undergraduate program, which looks into the Blockchain’s transformative impact on business practices.

7. Easy Talent Acquisition

So far, this article has focused on how digital business strategies can benefit a brand’s relationship with customers. But these strategies can also revolutionize the process of talent acquisition. Of course, this is equally important, as there’s no successful business without a talented and capable workforce.

Before, recruiting top talent was often a challenging and time-consuming endeavor. Now, attracting talent (and the right talent for your business at that) is almost effortless. How?

Well, digital tools have got your back every step of the way. From job-matching sites like LinkedIn attracting candidates based on their professional profiles to automated systems streamlining the hiring process, digital tools have completely transformed talent acquisition.

That’s not to mention the endless opportunities working from home has opened up both for businesses and employees. Thanks to digitalization, the whole world is basically your talent pool.

8. Higher Revenue

Though each of the mentioned benefits is essential for business success in and of itself, they also have a cumulative impact on one of the most crucial business metrics: revenue. Investing in digitalization might seem like a major undertaking, but this impact makes every penny worth it.

Let’s recap what you can get with effective digital business strategies. You can get more effective systems and productive employees, better decision-making and judgment, improved products and sales channels, and a long-lasting (and interactive) relationship with customers. All of these create a robust foundation for revenue growth.

Reap the Full Benefits of Digital Business Strategies

There’s no doubt about it – effective digital business strategies can transform the trajectory of virtually any business. But for these strategies to work, they must be carried out with precision, knowledge, and strategic foresight.

That’s where OPIT’s Bachelor’s Degree in Digital Business and Master’s Degree in Applied Digital Business come into play.

Regardless of the digital business career you’re interested in (e.g., digital business consultant, digital marketing specialist, or digital transformation specialist), these courses will equip you with the necessary skills to stay ahead in a globally connected world.