VRDays: Virtual Reality and Leadership Development

Last week I attended a few sessions of the VRDays in Amsterdam because I wanted to get in tune with the latest developments in the fields of virtual and augmented reality. Also, I attended to kickstart my thoughts on how these technologies can aid leadership development. And of course, it's cool to wear a hololens...

Here's a short video summary, a shorter version of the one I've send out in the 'Innovation Monday' message in my company.



In short: the fields of VR and AR are interesting, cool and in full development backed by major players in the tech industry. VR is the closest to mass market, and it's first going for games and entertainment. AR is still very much in prototypes with expensive materials (about 5000 for the Hololens for example).  There are training examples out there such as OCE that creates training on their new machines before these machines physically exist., Other examples are virtual field trips. Those early examples of VR training don't really relate well to a field as leadership development where the learning is about behavior and interaction with other people. Once the technology moves on, we all get more experience with it and get past the early hick-ups, and once we can interact with multiple people in the same virtual space, things will be different.

A few additional notes:

• While I can agree with the clear difference between virtual reality (think watching a virtual movie) and augmented reality (think Pokemon Go), I didn't relate to Microsoft's definition of Mixed Reality. To me that's a term they put in the market to differentiate themselves but it's a shade of Augmented Reality if you ask me.
• Can we use VR/AR for leadership development? Of course you can always use new shiny cool things just for the sake of the shiny new cool thing, but I prefer if there is also a learning value (does it make learning better, faster, deeper, with more lasting impact?). Throughout the discussions we had, I can see value in virtual field trips (such as this example of Google Innovation Labs), virtual or augmented data visualization of assessment reports,  bringing in experts from a far away location, or short case study VR movies. 
• Will it really take a few years? A self-selecting audience going to VRDays, TED talks and the likes would typically underestimate the time it takes for a new technology or learning activity to become mainstream - even if that's faster than before. First the big players will tackle other markets, and training will be a small application. Also, the field of education and training are quite conservative as I've noticed over the years. So yes, I do think it will take its time before we can apply it to a field as leadership development. That's not a bad thing - we can actually think it through. Case in point: I had ordered the Vuze VR camera due to be released this month to do a few prototypes, but just got notification it's pushed back to March. So yes, it's all going to take a bit more time than impatient innovators would like to :-).