Eight Ways to See a Baseball Game

People tend to see things in a very "flat" way. However, there are in fact many ways to experience even the most basic activity, which means businesses can now offer customers a whole range of immersive encounters. Joe Pine and Kim Korn have explored what this multiverse offers in their new book Infinite Possibility.

For example, thanks to the multiverse and using their core theory of the eight key types of immersive models, Joe and Kim explain how there are actually eight ways to participate in a simple baseball game:

1. Reality (Space, Matter, Time): You are in the bleachers of your hometown baseball team, cheering them on.

2. Augmented Reality (No Space, No Matter, Time): While watching the game, you are checking your iPhone for stats on the players, information about the game, and checking in on FourSquare.

3. Alternate Reality (Space, No Matter, No Time): You are playing an online Rotisserie league based on real players’ performance in actual games, but translated into a web-based computer experience.

4. Warped Reality (Space, Matter, No Time): You are attending an old-timer’s fantasy camp with retired players, and maybe even old uniforms from a time gone by. No aluminum bats here!

5. Virtuality (No Space, No Matter, No Time): Ah, here is a familiar category. Your Playstation video game is entirely virtual.

6. Augmented Virtuality:(No Space, Matter, No Time): This is a tricky one! You send your favorite Little League player a physical Hallmark greeting card that shows his favorite characters in 3D when he holds it up to his computer screen.

7. Physical Virtuality (No Space, Time, Matter): This realm brings the virtual to the physical. Design your favorite baseball stadium in LEGO’s on your computer — LEGO will send you a complete kit in the mail.

8. Mirrored Virtuality (Space, No Matter, No Time): Major League Baseball Gameday allows you to review every throw and every hit from various camera angles in 3D. One game could be relived for hundreds of years if you wanted to see it all!

Five Reasons Why the Talent Leaves

Wendy Axelrod and Jeannie Coyle's new book explores how talent development can best be facilitated by the managers the talents work with every day. Developing talent is important, especially since simply retaining talent is enough of a challenge. Every day, organizations lose their highest-potential employees to things that could have been avoided. Here are five of the most common avoidable reasons why the talent leaves:

1. Ineffective Ways of Giving Feedback and Measuring Performance. This is not about the contents of the feedback but the way in which the feedback is communicated. Many companies do not do a very effective job at giving feedback and even a positive interaction can leave the talent irritated. Feedback is usually non-existent or "breezed through" hurriedly giving the impression to the employee that the company doesn't really value them.

2. Wandering Priorities. Most companies are great at setting up a strategic directive but lousy at sticking with it. The talent then ends up giving his or her all to something that has -- since being assigned -- become a lower-level priority for the organization (but no one told the talent that). That kind of frustration and feeling of disrespect will have 'em heading for the door.

3. Not Keeping Other Talents in the Organization. Top talent often measures itself against others, so when a talented individual is in a group with other talented individuals, it creates an energetic and fulfilling working environment. However, pairing top talent with moderate to weak performers not only slows down the talent but makes him or her question their value to the organization and how much growing and learning can be done within that particular workplace.

4. Corporate Bureaucracy. Often cited as one of the most common reasons people leave organizations, bureaucracy is tolerated by companies of all sizes and not just larger institutions. In order for talent to develop, it must be allowed to explore and expand in non-traditional ways ("freedom to grow"). If there's a strong bureaucratic vibe in the organization, the talent feels obstructed and blocked at every turn. He or she will immediately leave for another place where they have more room to move.

5. A Lack of Exciting Projects. Everyone has a small measure of work that is administrative and perhaps dull, and talented individuals don't expect each day to be a exciting challenge. But often these individuals are never given anything that challenges them and gives them an opportunity to exercise and develop their talents. Sooner or later, boredom and the inability to do anything outside of the most mundane of duties will drive the talent out.

Thoughts? Responses? Ideas?