According to McKinsey senior partner Eric Hazan, the metaverse is a “strategic inflexion point for businesses” and it represents a “significant opportunity to influence the way we live, connect, learn, innovate and collaborate.”

“Our aim is to help business leaders better understand [the metaverse’s] power and potential, identify strategic imperatives and act as drivers of its evolution,” said Hazan.

The report, whose findings stem from a survey of more than 3,400 consumers, corporate executives and metaverse experts in several countries, was carried out with the aim of analysing the metaverse’s potential as a new arena in which the physical and digital worlds converge, as well as of identifying its main future prospects.

Opportunity for the future

Total investment in the metaverse in early 2022 exceeded $120 billion, well up from the $57 billion that were invested during the whole of last year. According to McKinsey, this indicates that the new convergence between the physical and digital domains is becoming “a major future opportunity” owing to the digital technology boom and the growing inclination shown by consumers for enjoying new digital experiences.

As for consumers, the study revealed that, of the more than 3 billion people worldwide who already have access to various versions of the metaverse, 59% would rather enjoy at least one experience in it, before its physical alternative.
 
In this sense, McKinsey partner Emilio Capela believes it is possible that the metaverse will have “a major impact” on our business and personal lives, in the same way the internet did, emphasizing the “transformative” element of this parallel reality, one that “has placed us on the cusp of the next wave of digital disruption.”
 
Capela further explained that, although the idea of virtual interpersonal connections has been in the making for decades, it is “becoming increasingly real,” meaning that real people use the metaverse and spend real money on it, and that corporations strongly believe in it.
 
The metaverse could be worth $5 trillion by 2030, according to McKinsey.

The firm underlined that, while the advent of the internet caused countless businesses to disappear, it also kept evolving at a “faster and faster” rate, generating the digital reality we know today.

Long-term strategy to achieve metaverse success

According to McKinsey, the metaverse is giving companies across all sectors the opportunity to approach digitalisation via an “innovative concept” that leverages among others the advantages of an immersive virtual reality, creating a new digital ecosystem.

McKinsey emphasised that, if companies are to embrace the metaverse successfully, they must develop a long-term strategy capable of identifying the opportunities and risks inherent in this new alternative reality. They must also decide where to position themselves on the metaverse’s adoption curve based on their clients, and define in “clear” fashion where and how to engage with the metaverse, determining which new experiences will be most suited to it.