This holiday season, parents who buy Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, Nintendo Co.'s Wii, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 or the latest online game need not feel guilty. Turns out that young people - and adults - aren't wasting time when they're playing video games.

Whether they're tapping away on video game controllers or the keys of their computers in increasingly popular online games, today's game players are acquiring the skills that companies increasingly value as the gaming generation enters the workforce.

In fact, the skills needed to succeed in gaming can help young people "to be more sociable, develop strategic thinking and become better leaders in life," according to a book, "The Kids are Alright: How the Gamer Generation is Changing the Workplace." The authors, John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, say that games "deserve" a role in helping young people grow into adults because they require them to use different mental and social skills, often simultaneously.

With that in mind, thousands of universities around the world now have access to Innov8, IBM's new "serious game," available at no charge. We developed the game to help university students and young professionals develop a combination of business and information IT skills, important attributes needed to compete in a global economy.

Over the past two decades, IT professionals have had to break out of their comfort with proprietary systems as the industry moved to client-server computing and then to open computing. Today's move to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is asking both IT and line of business professionals to acquire cross-over skills in each other's domains. That's why the game stresses learning activities that combine IT acumen with business skills.

Much like pilots who use flight simulators to learn how to fly airplanes, students of IT management studies who grew up playing video games can benefit from engaging in learning activities in the way they like to learn.