Business Lessons in World of Warcraft

While some wonder if we're learning the right things from WoW, others wonder if we aren't paying attention to the right things - specifically how World of Warcraft can teach us how to work together in a business environment. Tech entrepreneur Joi Ito (whom we've mentioned before) spoke this weekend at the ScreenBurn Beta Festival on the lessons businesses might pick up from managing a Warcraft guild. I personally have to wonder why Warcraft is chosen as the example when any multi-player game can have the same teamwork and guild management issues - perhaps its massive popularity is just starting to make these parallels obvious as business-oriented people are pulled into the game world.

Update: Ito has a lengthy blog post discussing the topic, as well. Good reading!