When VECTRE co-founder and managing partner Myra Ballentine left her full-time management consulting job to help launch a startup, she knew she wanted to have a positive impact on women and minorities in the workplace.
She is using VR to reach this goal. One of the VR trainings VECTRE uses puts users in the shoes of a woman, a minority or both. The inclusion and bias training, which is still in development, puts the user in a VR office setting, and using storytelling, shows the user what a female or minority goes through in an office, such as aggression, sexual harassment or bias.
"We believe that immersive technology will play a significant role in our society in the coming years, and we want to be leading that revolution,"
"Being able to stand in someone else's shoes is super powerful," she said. "It brings awareness to others' lived experiences and also lets you empathize in a deeper way."
Ballentine, along with her husband, Michael, Mickey Stewart and Parth Naik, founded VECTRE in March. They were all working in the corporate world at a company that operated in various niches, including VR. However, Ballentine and the team found that they were dissatisfied with the direction their organization chose to take VR.
"We felt that the mindset and strategy of the company and resources they were putting into VR were not aligning with the direction that we saw VR going," she said.
The group decided to pursue their own work with VR, ultimately looking to disrupt the way people think about technology and storytelling (although the two companies still do work on projects together today).
"We knew there was a huge market out there for us; we had a vision of where we wanted to be," Ballentine said. "That disruption that we craved and the unique opportunity there is for storytelling in VR was not being tapped in our earlier company."
The result? VECTRE, which offers a suite of different trainings, including its aforementioned bias and inclusion tracks.
For example: There's courses for safety, health and confined space training. In the later course, for example, it allows users to be fully immersed in a small space, without the risk of getting hurt. Goodbye boring, old training videos; users can experience what they need to retain important information.
"Gamifiying learning is always more engaging," Ballentine said. "This is a fun, interactive way to train. VR has shown to have 75 percent better retention than typical classroom teaching."
Additionally, VECTRE offers product visualization and architectural visualization, which allows marketing departments to design in a 3D, real-life space. This allows them to see how the product looks when light and other elements are included, and can even lower expensive design printing or building costs. For example, an architect can use VR immersion to view a building before the first brick is placed. These aren't just hypothetical offerings, either. Product Viz with Procter & Gamble used theses tools to create a virtual Walmart, giving them a chance to see how their new shampoo bottle designs looked next to competitors'.
Those aren't VECTRE's only accomplishments. In just six months since launching, they have taken the Cincy VR scene by storm and worked with Fortune 20 companies. They have been nominated for a CincyInno 50 On Fire Award. And, Ballentine will also be presenting at Tech Frontiers — VR/AR on Oct. 11, alongside presenters from Children's Hospital and P&G.
And VECTRE is just getting started. The team, along with their co-ops, wants to continue to influence, and develop the VR space.
"We believe that immersive technology will play a significant role in our society in the coming years, and we want to be leading that revolution," Ballentine said.
