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There is a growing demand for the ability to connect to others. It is with each other that we can make sense, and this is social. Organizations, in order to function, need to encourage social exchanges and social learning due to faster rates of business and technological changes. Social experience is adaptive by nature and a social learning mindset enables better feedback on environmental changes back to the organization.

The Internet has fundamentally changed how we communicate on a scale as large as the printing press or the advent of written language.

Our relationship with knowledge is changing as our work becomes more intangible and complex. Notice how most value in today’s marketplace is intangible, with Google’s multi- billion dollar valuation an example of value in non-tangible processes that could be deflated with the development of a better search algorithm. Non-physical assets comprise about 80 percent of the value of Standard & Poor’s 500 US companies in leading industries.

I recently discussed the idea of interest graphs with Gravity CTO Jim Benedetto, who described how his company determines visitors’ interests so its content-industry customers can deliver personalized experiences.

The fading ranks of middle management have lost their edge, thanks to revolutions in both technology and globalization. Indeed, the latest wave of technology advances—cloud computing, advanced mobile applications and devices, and rapidly expanding social networks to name a few—have greatly eased access to knowledge work. Nowhere is this change seen more dramatically than with the rapidly ascending workforce in high-growth markets outside the United States. Business writer Seth Godin remarks ominously, “If you're the average person out there doing average work, there's going to be someone else out there doing the exact same thing as you, but cheaper.” The game has shifted to a far more competitive, globally-connected field of play, requiring individuals to differentiate themselves in authentic, compelling ways like never before. Godin concludes, “If you're different somehow and have made yourself unique, people will find you and pay you more.”

How We Will Learn: Technology-Enabled Informal LearningWhen we talk about fostering agility, curiosity and continuous learning, we’re fortunate because today we have a host of Web-based technologies (including social, mobile, video, games, and personalized portals) that can serve as perfect tools to support the self-directed learner.By utilizing technology-enabled informal learning resources, collaborative learners can easily share and exchange knowledge, and self-directed learners can continuously teach themselves. These tools allow us to gain and share knowledge when, where and how we want it.Technology-enabled informal learning (that is, technology-based learning that takes place outside a formal classroom environment) also makes sense for organizations because we know that people learn in a variety of ways, and they usually like to learn on their own terms. This insight is derived from Howard Gardner, the influential educational thinker, who has argued that all of us have multiple intelligences. Adjusting and adapting to this cognitive norm, Gardner explains, will generally result in greater skill development and sharper problem solving.

According to ASTD’s Learning Executive’s Confidence Index for the fourth quarter of 2011, almost 55% of learning executives expect an increase in the use of informal learning and Web 2.0 tools in their organizations over the next 6 months.

My premise is that the term gamification doesn’t accurately depict the benefits a business can achieve.

The truth is that game mechanics have been used in business for some time. For example, companies currently use leader boards for sales and loyalty programs for customers. We are already using other terms that offer some of the same benefits such as engagement strategies, game mechanics, advocacy, and rewards.

Why do we care about gamification?

The Interest Graph has been described as the “middle ground between Google and Facebook – between search, advertising, and the social graph”. Simply put, Google creates their version of the Interest Graph by mining my search queries and other data collected online, for example through Gmail or Google Maps.  It then offers advertisers a way to personalize their messages. One of the problems is the often high noise level in the data due to the lack of context (e.g. I might be looking up something for a friend rather than myself), which decreases relevancy. Recently, there has been a lot of buzz around social search as studies have shown that friend recommendations are much more powerful than traditional advertising in influencing consumer behavior and purchasing decisions.

You can think of attention as the gateway to thinking. Without it, other aspects of thinking, namely, perception, memory, language, learning, creativity, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making are greatly diminished or can’t occur at all.

In fact, studies have shown that reading uninterrupted text results in faster completion and better understanding, recall, and learning than those who read text filled with hyperlinks and ads.

Research shows that, for example, video games and other screen media improve visual-spatial capabilities, increase attentional ability, reaction times, and the capacity to identify details among clutter. Also, rather than making children stupid, it may just be making them different. For example, the ubiquitous use of Internet search engines is causing children to become less adept at remembering things and more skilled at remembering where to find things. Given the ease with which information can be find these days, it only stands to reason that knowing where to look is becoming more important for children than actually knowing something. Not having to retain information in our brain may allow it to engage in more “higher-order” processing such as contemplation, critical thinking, and problem solving.