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Behavior is the unknowable variable in every innovation, and it is the variable that most determines the opportunity a new business model has to evolve and take advantage of the new behavior.

Much hype surrounds the topic of gamification. Often seen as a technique to add engagement to existing tasks, projects, marketing campaigns, and initiatives, the term gamification unfortunately lacks the seriousness it deserves. This report seeks to change the point of view and demonstrate where gamification plays a role in the enterprise. More importantly, executives will discover how gamification can drive behavior and outcomes through both monetary and non-monetary incentives in enterprise class settings.

Gamification is the latest buzzword on the street. It ranked a keynote panel session at Enterprise 2.0 in November and it was one of two main topics discussed at the recent Institute for Social, Search and Mobile Marketing (ISSMM) K1 Executive Roundtable.  

In any industry, the need to manage your brand's community is pressing. Companies have invested significant resources into building community on social networks, but as Facebook and other social media sites continue to block access to your user data, smart marketers and business leaders are realizing that the real value of social engagement is found on their own web properties and applications. Gamification offers a means of applying the benefits of social engagement directly to your properties. It is a proven business strategy that enables businesses to influence the behaviors of your entire community, and exceed your user-driven business objectives.

"NEXT UP: MACHINES THAT UNDERSTAND YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU CARE ABOUT, ANTICIPATE YOUR BEHAVIOR AND EMOTIONS, ABSORB YOUR SOCIAL GRAPH, INTERPRET YOUR INTENTIONS, AND MAKE LIFE, UM, "EASIER.""

"Welcome to the 21st century-where views on technology, work ethic and cultural diversity are strikingly different from generation to generation.  The complex dynamics of social interaction, standards for performance and long-understood patterns of behavior are under direct assault-if not washed away by the cross-generational tide. Each generation is leaving its own mark on its own terms, and disconnects between intention, action, and understanding can cause negative consequences"

AMHERST, Mass. - As computer scientists this year celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the mathematical genius Alan Turing, who set out the basis for digital computing in the 1930s to anticipate the electronic age, they still quest after a machine as adaptable and intelligent as the human brain. Now, computer scientist Hava Siegelmann of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, an expert in neural networks, has taken Turing's work to its next logical step. She is translating her 1993 discovery of what she has dubbed "Super-Turing" computation into an adaptable computational system that learns and evolves, using input from the environment in a way much more like our brains do than classic Turing-type computers. She and her post-doctoral research colleague Jeremie Cabessa report on the advance in the current issue of Neural Computation. "This model is inspired by the brain," she says. "It is a mathematical formulation of the brain's neural networks with their adaptive abilities." The authors show that when the model is installed in an environment offering constant sensory stimuli like the real world, and when all stimulus-response pairs are considered over the machine's lifetime, the Super Turing model yields an exponentially greater repertoire of behaviors than the classical computer or Turing model. They demonstrate that the Super-Turing model is superior for human-like tasks and learning.

t is true that learning through "theory + doing + debriefing" changes behavior.  It works. It increases capacity.  And it also true that learning, if not used, goes away.

"When adding game elements to your site or business, be sure to incorporate a way for current customers to recruit new ones, says gamification expert Gabe Zichermann. Unlike loyalty programs, which can reinforce behaviors of existing customers, the "viral nature" of gamification can help attract new customers to your business. "At the very heart of what you're trying to do with gamification is to get people to come in, keep coming in and bring their friends to create a cycle in which your products, services and egagement drive customer adoption," Zichermann says."

Artificial Intelligence is not yet HAL from the 2001: The Space Odyssey…but we are getting awfully close. Sure enough, one day it could be as similar to the sci-fi potboilers being churned out by Hollywood. If that's your idea of what artificial intelligence is all about, then you aren't far off the mark. In layman's terms, artificial intelligence is about creating intelligent machines through the use of intelligent computer programs. Most, if not all of artificial intelligence (AI) tries to mimic human behavior. The scale of ambition is different, but artificial intelligence programming is a full-fledged field in the cutting edge of science today. If you have some interest in the world of tomorrow, check out these websites to grasp what artificial intelligence is all about.

Games are fun-well, unless you're playing with your super-competitive friend. And we all have one, don't we? Still, for the most part, games are entertaining-and that's why gamification has taken off as a technique to entice people to adopt various applications and processes. Gamification is defined as the use of game design techniques, game thinking, and game mechanics to enhance non-game contexts. In other words, gamification gets people interested in something they otherwise wouldn't notice while also encouraging them to compete in game-like activities.

James Kelway started the Six Circles - an Experience Design Framework, as an enquiry into how different design principles can be applied to the field of digital product design. The principles studied led to the emergence of six core themes; persuasion, behavior, visual design, usability, interaction and content. The book describes the importance of these areas and how working systematically with these themes will require a holistic mindset and approach that require multi-disciplinary teams within organizations to ensure the creation of quality products. It is also serves as a way to judge the effectiveness of digital products using the six lenses described

Our company is a science-oriented company, and the core belief is that behavior - human or otherwise - can be mathematically expressed. Yes, people make irrational value judgments, but they are driven by common motivation factors, and the math expresses that. I look at the so-called "big data phenomenon" as the instantiation of human experience. Previously, we could not quantitatively measure human experience, because the data wasn't being captured. But Twitter recently announced that they now serve 350 billion tweets a day. What we say and what we do has a physical manifestation now. Once there is a physical manifestation of a phenomenon, then it can be mathematically expressed. And if you can express it, then you can shape business ideas around it, whether that's in government or health care or business.

Tech predictions focusing only on technology miss a key component: people.

The growing company "offers an advanced semantic page-level analysis that surfaces reader emotions, behaviors, motivations and intentions in order to match ads with similar emotional appeal, without using tracking cookies. 

"How do you start something new? Whether it's an exercise program, a simple task you've left on the back burner, or creating a new business from scratch-how do you get started? Doing so can be very intimidating. And it's the lack of starting that kills most projects. In his now classic article, "Small Wins," Karl Weick argues that when goals seem overwhelming, they sap our intrinsic motivation. Here are three timeless rules for starting something new."

What do Color, Quora, Hunch, Blippy, and StockTwits have in common? They are examples of companies that generate value for their users by leveraging the concept of the Interest Graph. The list also features some of the most promising startups right now, having raised close to $100 million in venture funding. Pure coincidence?