Group items tagged

"By capturing the big data on user activity and using this data to create a more engaging experience, businesses can better engage and motivate employees. As many at Dreamforce 2013 learned, combining big data with gamification is a powerful tool for motivating better performance, driving business results, and generating a competitive advantage."

"Gamification has emerged as a significant trend in recent years. Gamification uses game mechanics and game design techniques in non-gaming context - it's a powerful tool to engage employees, customers and the public to change behaviors, develop skills and drive innovation. Our Special Report evaluates the trends, how gamification is being applied in various industries and explores its future opportunities."

For anyone interested in how to engage others with compelling stories, watch this talk by Chris Anderson, curator of TED Talks. TED's 'Ads Worth Spreading' initiative is an interesting development that takes many of the aspects of sustainable 'communities' and applies them to the world of engaging advertising. Anderson's premise is that the increasingly desperate 'buy me' approach will lose out to those who seek to build relationships with their ad dollars.

Many companies have invested significantly in gathering vast amounts of data, yet they still struggle to extract insights, put them to work for the business and create truly data-driven organisations. The virtuous circle of data explores how organisations can spark a chain of events through top-down leadership and bottom-up employee engagement that creates a culture with data at the centre of decision-making.

Many companies have invested significantly in gathering vast amounts of data, yet they still struggle to extract insights, put them to work for the business and create truly data-driven organisations. The virtuous circle of data explores how organisations can spark a chain of events through top-down leadership and bottom-up employee engagement that creates a culture with data at the centre of decision-making.

Michigan State University has over 450,000 alumni around the world. The school's University Advancement department sought to create a representation of alumni and donor sentiment and likelihood of philanthropic engagement based on data gathered from social media. However, these analyses often took weeks to process, limiting the school's ability to gather valuable insights in a timely manner. This case study describes how MSU leveraged business intelligence and predictive analytics to gain deep insight into an individual alum's potential to give, resulting in the following positive results: -An annual ROI of 55% -An average annual benefit of $34,434 -And more The case study purports to show how organisations can identify new opportunities for revenue generation by embracing a BI and predictive analytics strategy.

"Knowledge can only be volunteered it cannot be conscripted. You can't make someone share their knowledge, because you can never measure if they have. You can measure information transfer or process compliance, but you can't determine if a senior partner has truly passed on all their experience or knowledge of a case. We only know what we know when we need to know it. Human knowledge is deeply contextual and requires stimulus for recall. Unlike computers we do not have a list-all function. Small verbal or nonverbal clues can provide those ah-ha moments when a memory or series of memories are suddenly recalled, in context to enable us to act. When we sleep on things we are engaged in a complex organic form of knowledge recall and creation; in contrast a computer would need to be rebooted. In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge. A genuine request for help is not often refused unless there is literally no time or a previous history of distrust. On the other hand ask people to codify all that they know in advance of a contextual enquiry and it will be refused (in practice its impossible anyway). Linking and connecting people is more important than storing their artifacts. Everything is fragmented. We evolved to handle unstructured fragmented fine granularity information objects, not highly structured documents. People will spend hours on the internet, or in casual conversation without any incentive or pressure. However creating and using structured documents requires considerably more effort and time. Our brains evolved to handle fragmented patterns not information. Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success. When my young son burnt his finger on a match he learnt more about the dangers of fire than any amount of parental instruction cold provide. All human cultures have developed forms that allow stories of failure to spread without attribution of blame. Avoidance of failure has greater evolutionary advantage than imitatio

"Gamification is a novel idea, and while the label itself may not endear itself to the nature of law, the concept is spot on: using the concept of games to drive user engagement and solve problems…If we as an industry can tap into [lawyers'] competitive nature to drive change…then we'll be in a better place."

"The problem is that too many 'lessons learned' programmes fail. Without falling into the trap of sweeping generalisations, I would suggest that more often than not the story itself is the problem; they just aren't interesting enough; they are shallow; they lack the richness that is needed to engage the intended audience; and they lack a structure that reflects the way adults learn. And that is the bottom line, all too often they just don't work in relation to the ways in which adults learn - I would argue in the vast majority of practice that there is actually little or no consideration for the the target audience of a lesson learned (the adult as a learner)."

"Gamification, as research firm Forrester defines it, is "the insertion of game dynamics and mechanics into non-game activities to drive a desired behavior." To be successful, businesses need to engage their communities in ways that match business goals, whether that's by increasing communication with employees and customers, reducing support costs, or promoting a greater sense of community and recognition."

"The company of the future - and indeed the company of the present - needs new instruments to adapt to a changing reality. The new generation of digital natives is progressively being incorporated to the world of work. We are talking about a generation that has lived most of its life within the technological revolution that has occurred in the last two decades. It has connected people, who spend more time on the Internet than in front of the television and who have lived with the emergence of video games. It is not to judge whether that is good or bad, it's simply real and nothing will change it."

Looking at the HiSocial offering, I can't help but wonder about unintended consequences. The digital natives are savvy and will naturally find ways of 'gaming' the system. If you simple reward actions such as visiting intranet pages or 'downloading corporate material', you are in no way increasing the sum total knowledge, helping efficiency or decision making. What's needed is reward that stimulates participation and qualitative contribution, not just transactions.

"Amy Jo Kim, Ph.D. is a leading consultant on gamification as a business model to increase customer engagement. She also holds a Ph.D. in behavioral psychology. In 2010, Kim reworked Bartle's Player Types Model. She replaced the "Killer" type with "Express" -- a much more business- and school-friendly descriptor! Completing the axis, "Compete" took the place of "Achiever," "Explore" replaced "Explorer," and "Collaborate" replaced "Cooperate.""

When managers say they are data driven and ROI focused they are usually more intent on professing a belief than delivering results. They are, essentially, accidental theorists, putting their faith in an abstract idea rather than engaging in any true analysis of cause and effect. Despite what many will tell you, numbers can lie and only fools follow them blindly.

"Here we present four specific approaches to the creation of what we call digital "hives"-electronic hubs bristling with collective activity and designed to solve a particular problem or set of problems, to drive new habits, and to encourage organizational change (exhibit). Digital tools to facilitate networking and collaboration propel these "horizontal" cascades, which at their best can weave new patterns of engagement across geographic and other organizational boundaries. In this way, they make it possible to have new conversations around problem solving, unlock previously tacit knowledge, and speed up execution. "

The inspiration for this first event on Serious Games comes from Jane McGonigal's TED talk on Serious Games, and David Helgason's declaration of the 'Year of Gamification'. The event will examine how games and games technologies are being brought into 'serious' areas, as well as how serious tasks are being made more game-like. There are three ways that games can be adopted by other sectors: * by generating positive side effects from gameplay; * by creating technology that can be reused; * and by increasing engagement with a problem or activity. Mary Matthews from Blitz Games Studios and Alex Fleetwood from Hide and Seek, will discuss future opportunities and the event will be chaired by Stian Westlake, Director of Policy & Research Unit, NESTA.

Lessons from education - engaging participants in conferences

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