Trading places in the future

By Shaun Inguanzo
ONLINE virtual worlds could hold the key to how businesses will trade in the future.
Business forecaster Morris Miselowski told businesses at the South East Business Networks FutureMakers breakfast at Sandown Racecourse last week that change was the only constant.
And with the Internet having evolved in just 15 years, he said that change was occurring every day.
Mr Miselowski showed business people the online world of Second Life, a commercial take on the popular computer game genre of Massively Multiplayer Online Games.
More of a money-making tool than a game, Second Life allows players to create an avatar (a virtual representation of themselves) and walk around a virtual world interacting with others, creating virtual products and selling them.
In one example, Mr Miselowski showed how a jeans manufacturer allowed people to design their own jeans in the game, which would then go through a virtual production plant.
Two weeks later, he said, the tangible product would arrive on real doorsteps – and people wouldn’t have to leave their homes, or the virtual world, to go to a shopping centre and try on a pair of mass-produced jeans.
Mr Miselowski said Second Life was an example of how the face of trade was changing, and why businesses should be investigating how they would tackle the change from traditional to future methods of selling products.