Most companies are not using mixed reality in any way, according to a recent study, but that doesn’t mean they don't think it's important.

A survey conducted by Harvard Business Review in March 2018 found that roughly two-thirds of the 394 US executives polled said they are currently exploring or testing the use of mixed reality (MR) technology. Only 20% said they are “currently in production or deploying MR.”

But the respondents were in agreement that the technology will be important in the near future. More than half of the US executives surveyed said MR would be very important to their strategic goals within three years.

Regarding the potential value and importance of MR, the responses tended to cluster around productivity and process on the one hand and customer experience on the other.

HBR defines mixed reality as a spectrum of blending the physical and digital worlds with augmented reality at one end of the sliding scale and virtual reality on the other.

eMarketer's definition is somewhat different: "Mixed reality blends objects from the physical and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where these objects coexist and interact in real time," said analyst Victoria Petrock.

"As VR, AR and MR become more accessible and people become more comfortable with them, we're seeing different use cases emerge in different industries," she said. "For example, virtual reality is helping companies train their employees by immersing them into role-playing situations in virtual worlds. Augmented reality and mixed reality are helping in situations like engineering design and architecture, where it's helpful to overlay information that enhances a real-world image."