Big business is paying a batch of attention to the metaverse. But what are they looking for?

edwina fitzmaurice, Global Chief Customer Success Officer at the consulting firm Ernst & Young, thinks about this perhaps more than anyone on the planet except Mark Zuckerberg. Fitzmaurice leads EY’s “wave space” and “metaverse laboratory”, Virtual sandboxes intended to help guide “customers through the multitude of immersive digital experiences emerging” and help them navigate a “decentralized economy” based on Web3 technology.

I had a conversation with Edwina last week, via an old-fashioned Zoom 2D call, that started with a simple question: when the metaverse directors from the world come…