Towards a Framework for Evaluating Immersive Business Models: Evaluating Service Innovations in Second Life

Virtual worlds may be enabling technologies for the next generation of business models, practices and innovations in service. We situate our research within the field of service science and aim to evaluate service innovations. Because of Second Life´s visibility as the de facto virtual world for commerce, we apply an immersive business evaluation framework against existing and hypothetical Second Life innovations. We then develop a framework based on Media Richness and Task Closure Theories to evaluate these cases. We thus progress toward theories of immersive business and concomitant evaluative frameworks for immersive business models. We posit the following characteristics of potential Second Life innovations based on our analysis: 1) feedback and interactions between users are not dissipated; 2) tasks that are profitable enough to support can be started and closed by users within Second Life; and 3) users are compelled to form a social presence, which is then leveraged.