HBS.gifThe Harvard Business Review has spoken: alternate reality gaming may very well be the future of business. As part of its annual “Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas” issue, the magazine addressed the potential of alternate reality gaming to reshape the business world.

The article, written by Jane McGonigal, addresses the benefits of capitalizing on collective intelligence in the workplace. No stranger to forecasting the future, Jane predicts that

eventually, games will become the go-to tools for launching internal initiatives, or they will rally global teams of outside “expert players” to engage in business forecasting. Ultimately, ARGs will involve customers in inventing new products and services or in testing companies’ market assumptions.

In the article, Jane pulls on her experience behind the scenes with World Without Oil to demonstrate the potential of the genre. During the alternate reality game, players faced with a peak oil crisis sent in over a thousand blog posts, videos, podcasts and other submissions chronicling the potential effects and evaluating potential alternative strategies during an oil crisis.

So it’s time to clean up your resumes, spruce up your cover letters, and add a section for ARG experience — because the new media literacy you develop with every passing cipher you solve and each domain registration you pull up might help land your dream job someday.