Google CEO at G-20: Collaborative Games = Workplace Success

Google CEO Eric Schmidt made his own news at the G-20 in Pittsburgh this week suggesting that  multiplayer video games are good training for a career in tech and for the general workplace collaboration that fosters innovation.

“The game world is good training for a career in tech,” he said. “It teaches players to build a network, to use interactive skills and thinking.”

“Everything in the future online is going to look like a multiplayer game,” he said. “If  I were 15 years old, that’s what I would be doing right now.”

Schmidt’s remarks came during the question and answer portion of a G-20 Forum session sponsored by the Pittsburgh Technology Council.  Google’s own collaborative corporate culture is a testament to how it works.  ”Employees have to feel empowered,” Schmidt said. “That’s what makes people love what they do and where they work.”

Schmidt is not alone in his endorsement of a multiplayer game approach to building a more effective workplace. Deloitte consultants have contemplated this notion in their ongoing writings about The Big Shift — how digital technology is altering everything about business.

Learning to adopt, measure and master interactive business models is as critical to companies in every industry as rebounding from recession, the analysts said during a webcast last week. Building and harnessing the power of “collaborative curves” is central is a key to success:  “working, playing, and, learning together, can often be greater than the sum of our parts,” explain Deloitte analysts John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison.

Such collaborative dynamics are already evident in the rapid gains being made from open source applications. But the analysts favorite example is the wildly popular online multiplayer role-playing game World of Warcraft.

The global WOW ecosystem is comprised by more than 11.5 million players who work with and against each other racking up  experience points awarded for meeting  progressively more difficult challenges – like demolishing an Orc hunter raid mythical land of Uldar.

The adopted personas, strategies, execution and teamwork make WOW a reasonable template for dealing constructively and creatively with real-world challenges working with others. As more participants join a carefully-designed work environment and  knowledge economy, the more valuable its resources become, and the faster players increase their improved performance.

It should make for some interesting office discussions at review time.