Scott Fisher

I just spent three "days" watching Joi Ito do his thing in WoW, as well as listening to him explain to me what he felt was so compelling and interesting and important about it... and while I know that Joi and John are buddies and are probably in the same guild, their arguments about how WoW aids in management are totally obvious once you actually watch these advanced players play.
In other words, though it still takes considerable time to get to those levels, you still get "there" much faster than you would in real life. And by "there" I mean an upper level management position. If you so desire. The barrier to entry for those with that desire is much lower and much quicker to overcome.
It totally bootstraps "real life management experience".

That said, there is also another aspect, which to me, something of an information architect/UI designer/information designer geek, jumps right out: oh my god is there alot of data being manipulated in a visual way at any given moment. It's still very primitive mind you: a lot of icons, a lot of very geeky command-line style data dumping and control... but there's ALOT of it, and if your everyday computer usage has not motivated you to become a multitasking poweruser, questing with a dozen friends certainly will (or so I am told.. me I'm a loner, the more people try to egg me on, the further away I run! ;)
I digress.

So it bootstraps people skills and massively parallel multitasking in a virtual "heads up" environment.

Imagine a software developpment project using a WoW-style UI. Imagine a shared "military operation execution" software, worn in-field by augmented-reality-outfitted soldiers... These kinds of skills are key. You need to be able to target your weapon, chat with your CO and grok recon data all at once.

Ok sorry, ditch the military example... software development: a team of engineers working on a huge project (complete the world), they have a project roadmap (world map), they execute quests (OOP code modules), etc... Forgive the references, but it reminds of how Stephenson describes the large government software development program Y.T.'s mom works at in "Snow Crash", or even how the nano designers might work in a shop in "Diamond Age".

Rambling...