I had this conversation with someone from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the DOE, yesterday. Academia and research viewed as “an end in itself” is a very short term and rare luxury.
At some point, quickly, the ideas must be formed: “Here’s how it will change your company or country, here’s how much money it will save you, here’s how you will gain clients or customers and market share, here’s how much more efficient you will be over the course of a year, here is the value for safety, human rights, the ecosystem, here is the potential value for national security, here is the payback period and the return on investment calculation”.
“Cool” doesn’t cut it very long. Extrapolate early on where perhaps this could be useful. Pragmatism makes sense in a budget, but theory and “that’s fascinating“ can only hold up for so long.
Academia and research are truly fun sports, for a time, and Tang is proof that these things can add value. But, as Margaret Thatcher said 50 years ago, and it has its place in the discussion of R&D, “Eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
Somewhere the business case has to be made, and the sooner the better.
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Adrian Snook🚨 XR Professionals: It’s Time to Move Beyond the “Use Case” 🚨
After over 15 years working with virtual and augmented reality, one thing has become crystal clear to me:
👉 Simply devising and promoting more and more use cases for XR is not a recipe for business success.
We’ve all seen the flashy marketing demos. The speculative sizzle reels. But here’s the problem: a use case is not a business case.
🔍 What’s the difference?
• A use case says: “Look at how great our XR construction environment looks. You could use this for loads of cool stuff like training. This is what driving a digger would be like. Here is someone falling off scaffolding!
• A business case says: “Here’s how using XR to train these specific construction workers doing these tasks in these jobs will reduce training costs by 30% and deliver ROI within 12 months.”
One is a possibility. The other is a business plan.
💡 Let’s take that construction training example. XR can simulate hazardous environments, teach complex procedures, and allow for repeatable, scalable training. That’s the use case.
But unless we also show:
• That the new XR innovation is practically and logistically viable.
• That the outcome will be safe and compliant with statutes and regulations
• The cost of developing and deploying the specific solution you are proposing.
• The measurable benefits (e.g., reduced downtime, improved safety, faster onboarding)
• The comparison to traditional methods
• The expected return on investment
…then we’re not giving decision-makers what they need to say “yes.”
🎯 So here’s my challenge to the XR community:
Please stop producing flashy demonstrations that show XR could be used for doing something.
Start producing more thoughtful costed XR business cases and aligned pilot products that specifically show why someone should invest in doing it!
The future of XR and your business depends on speaking the language of business, not just the language of innovation.
