The Role of the Metaverse in Facilitating Innovation Processes within Distributed Work Settings

As the global workforce increasingly shifts towards distributed work arrangements, organizations face challenges in fostering digital innovation within virtual and geographically dispersed teams. This paper investigates the role of the Metaverse in addressing these challenges, focusing on enhancing communication, collaboration, and co-creation opportunities. Employing a Design Science Research (DSR) approach, we develop and evaluate a novel framework to bolster virtual team creativity and psychological safety, facilitating digital innovation. Results from our first design cycle suggest Metaverse has the potential to facilitate digital innovation through its immersive and interactive capabilities. This study contributes to theoretical and practical understandings of digital innovation in distributed work settings, offering a new artifact that provides organizations with practical guidance for leveraging the Metaverse. The evaluation of our framework through a lab experiment provides insights into its potential effectiveness in real-world applications, representing an initial step in operationalizing digital technologies for innovation.