Abstract: The use of the metaverse by consumers in the fashion industry gives rise to a setting where we can explore the “ontological reversal of digital” signalled by Baskerville, Myers and Yoo (2020). They claim (in this highly cited paper) that the reversal challenges traditional orthodoxies: the role of information systems being there to model and reflect reality. The ontological reversal paradigm puts digital first. Yet the full meaning of that claim and what it does for traditional strategy and IS paradigms has not been fully explored either by them or subsequently. Here, in the fashion industry, we look at the use of models (digital prototypes) being used to shape and drive the production of new physical artefacts and how this process is monetized at each step. It is suggested that digital has done two things: it has expanded the capabilities of the model (prototype) from being an object that sits between user and producer to becoming an object capable of generating revenues and adding additional value to both consumers and producers. And second that the domain of where such digital models are important has expanded from one where there are only a few buyers, typical in B2B settings as well as settings of high-priced unique objects, to more mass-produced items with very many consumers being involved. I use the setting of consumer fashion goods to explore these issues where the digital technology is manifest in the metaverse. The data shows that firms such as Nike are getting consumers to pay to play with prototypes/models, pay for digital versions of designs (such as NTFs), and where some firms agree (selectively) to produce in limited editions the digital designs made by consumers for subsequent sale in the physical sphere. These manifestations expand the notion of digital first, expand our notion of business model innovation and point to new logics along the physical digital divide.

About Charles Baden-Fuller

Charles Baden-Fuller is the Centenary Professor of Strategy and leader of the Strategy Group at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), ranked Global Top Ten by the Financial Times MSc survey of 2009 and top ten by the Financial Times MBA survey of 2011. He is famous for his strategy insights into the management of mature firms written up in many academic articles and his (coauthored) Harvard Business Press 'Rejuvenating the Mature Business'. He is also well known for his work on networked organisations and the management of young high technology firms, particularly in drug development-biotechnology.

His current research examines Business Models: what they are, how they can be improved and how they can be deployed in an increasingly digitalized world. This work is supported by a team of academics based at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), Sussex University, LSE, CREATE-Glasgow, Grenoble EM, and the Wharton School; any by more than £1.5 million of research funding from RCUK, EU and Mack Institute-Wharton School.

Charles Baden-Fuller has undertaken consulting assignments on strategy and mergers for large and small firms, and currently serves as director or advisor to several young high-tech firms as well as a trustee to a major charity. He combines this with being a senior fellow at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.