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The worlds #1 resource on enterprise prediction markets

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– Do not waste $400 on a &#8220-prediction market conference&#8221- run by a San Francisco clown and attended by suckers.

– Quit listening to the Ivory Tower economic canaries who are over-hyping the prediction markets &#8212-and have no experience whatsoever in the field of forecasting.

– Instead, do read this Inkling Markets resource, and do grill Adam Siegel on the phone. It is free, and he is the Real McCoy. [I hope that NewsFutures and CrowdCast will soon provide the same kind of EPM dossier on their respective website.]

inkling

Excellent article about enterprise prediction markets and Inkling Markets -with a good word for Robin Hanson, who invented MSR.

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Via Daniel Horowitz (Business and Technology Consultant)

Software taps into the zeitgeist to predict the future.

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • No Trades (other than at the start) —-> Not a reliable predictor, as of today
  • How you should read Midas Oracle
  • The best prediction exchanges
  • “There will be no media consumption left in ten years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.”
  • Hillary Clinton won’t be on the Democratic ticket. — It’s not going to happen. — N-E-V-E-R. — Not a chance. — Period.
  • Suggestion for WordPress — Subscribers’ Capabilities
  • This is why I said that those who believe that Hillary Clinton has a chance to be on the Democratic ticket are “clueless”.

You cant measure the usefulness of a system by how many resources it consumes.

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No GravatarMakes sense, doc.

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Doc, I didn&#8217-t say that &#8220-this effort by Starbucks somehow implies a devaluation of enterprise prediction markets.&#8221- I said that it implies a devaluation of the enterprise prediction markets that are overhyped as intra-corporation communication tools &#8212-I&#8217-m of course fine with them used as forecasting tools, which is our collective goal from day one (IEM in 1988). The complexity of prediction markets is bearable if and only if they are a bit more accurate than the other mechanisms. Now, if the objective is to get feedback and suggestions from employees, no need to pay for this complexity &#8212-a simple voting mechanism is more than enough and will do the trick.

In that regard, I would point to Xpree, which use that simple, voting mechanism when and where it makes sense to use it.

Mat Fogarty is well versed in the discipline of forecasting, and should be listened to more, here, I believe.

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Red Herring’s list of the top 100 North-American high-tech startups includes Inkling Markets —but not NewsFutures, Consensus Point, or Xpree.
  • Professor Koleman Strumpf explains the prediction markets to the countryland people.
  • Professor Koleman Strumpf tells CNN that a prediction market, by essence, can’t predict an upset.
  • Time magazine interview the 2 BetFair-Tradefair co-founders, and not a single time do they pronounce the magic words, “prediction markets”.
  • One Deep Throat told me that this VC firm might have been connected with the Irish prediction exchange, at inception.
  • BetFair Rapid = BetFair’s standalone, local, PC-based, order-entry software for prediction markets
  • Michael Moore tells the Democratic people to go Barack Obama in Pennsylvania (a two-tier state), but the polls and the prediction markets tell us that that won’t do the trick.

Enterprise prediction markets give voice to serious, technology-minded professionals who really know their vertical (engineers, analysts and contractors) -and reveal how frivolous and unpertinent most horizontal managers are.

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Via prediction market pioneer Emile Servan-Schreiber of NewsFutures [*], the New York Times (2 pages):

At InterContinental Hotels, Zubin Dowlaty, vice president for emerging technologies, decided to create an online market last fall to “harvest and prioritize ideas” from within the hotel’s 1,000-person technology staff. “We wanted to tap the creative class that may not be able to voice their ideas,” Mr. Dowlaty said. With InterContinental’s prediction market, players were asked to submit ideas anonymously, with a description and the benefit to customers and company. The bettors were given virtual tokens, each receiving 10 green ones to be placed on the best ideas and three red for bad ideas. There were no limits on the number of times bettors could change their wagers as new ideas came to market, and the market was open for four weeks. The five top ideas (most green tokens), five bottom ideas (most red) and the top five bettors (most accurate, according to market consensus) were listed regularly. The winners got $500, while second- and third-place finishers received $250 each. The winners, Mr. Dowlaty said, were engineers, analysts and contractors, not managers. More than 200 people participated, submitting 85 ideas. One person proposed bringing back quarter-operated vibrating beds. “That one got beat down really fast,” Mr. Dowlaty said. The winning ideas were suggestions to improve searching the company’s Web site to find and book hotel rooms. Two projects have been started as a result of the market, Mr. Dowlaty said. Next, he said, prediction markets may be opened up to InterContinental’s customers, probably beginning with members of its Priority Club loyalty program. They could bet in markets for improving service and offerings, with points redeemed. “It’s the next frontier and the natural progression for this,” Mr. Dowlaty said.

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InTrade-TradeSports, unlike BetFair-TradeFair, do manage internal, enterprise prediction markets.

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Previously: Do Google’s enterprise prediction markets work?

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Enterprise Prediction Markets: Co-Creating An Organizations Future

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Prediction Markets: Co-Creating An Organization&#8217-s Future – (PDF file) – by Inside Knowledge Magazine&#8217-s Victoria Axelrod and Jenny Ambrozek – 2008-05-10

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David Perry of Consensus Point:

Yes, markets are early warning systems for many things, they give you a sense of what your people know and do not know.

Prediction markets are not necessary if everyone has perfect knowledge- markets are designed to tell people what they do know, to be quiet when they do not
know and are designed to get around take place over time, allowing for prices to fluctuate depending on traders’ confidence.

The longer the markets run, the more informed. They are like wine, they get better with time.

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Emile Servan-Schreiber of NewsFutures is cited too.

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The New York Times article doesnt mention Googles enterprise prediction markets, alas. – Bo Cowgill says that the illustration published in the sidebar defines exclusively what is done at Google.

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Right-click on the New York Times graphic below, open Bo Cowgill&#8217-s post in another browser tab, and read his arguments.

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NYT PMs

Image Credit: Chris Gash for the New York Times

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Adam Siegel of Inkling Markets is also out with a post on that NYT article, but it is of no intellectual interest. Maybe Adam should blog less quickly and eat more fish.

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I forgot to tell you, the other day, that Best Buy is a Consensus Point client, but you knew that already.

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Previously: The New York Times is telling the business world that enterprise prediction markets are an essential management tool.

[Via Xpree]

Previously: Do Google’s enterprise prediction markets work?

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • The Terror Finance Blog
  • Playing fantasy sports is not gambling. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act includes a specific exemption for fantasy sports, provided the prizes are determined in advance and the imaginary teams don’t correspond to any real teams.
  • Inkling Markets’ Advisory Board… which does not want to tell its name
  • BetFair created the world’s largest ad banner —as certified by the Guinness Book of World Records.
  • Why Emile Servan-Schreiber is on to something with Bet 2 Give —and why InTrade, TradeSports and BetFair should each have a philanthropy wallet.
  • The CFTC is going to close the comments in 14 days. We have 14 days left to convince the CFTC to accept FOR-PROFIT prediction exchanges, and counter the evil petition organized by the American Enterprise Institute (which has on its payroll Paul Wolfowitz, the bright masterminder of the Iraq war).
  • The purpose of X2 is to identify future disruptions, opportunities, and competitive landscapes related to the content and dynamics of global science and technology innovation- to develop a new platform for understanding global innovation trends- and to present this information to policy- and decision-makers, as well as the general public, in a useful form.

DAYS OF RECKONING: The New York Times is telling the business world that enterprise prediction markets are an essential management tool.

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Via forecasting expert Mat Fogarty of Xpree (cited but not linked to, alas, in that story), the New York Times (2 pages):

“The potential is that prediction markets may be the thing that enables a big company to act more like a small, nimble company again,” said Jeffrey Severts, a vice president who oversees prediction markets at Best Buy, the electronics retailer. The store chain has experimented with prediction markets on everything from demand for digital set-top boxes to store-opening dates. For example, Mr. Severts said that in the fall of 2006, the prices in a prediction market on whether a new store in Shanghai would open on time — in December 2006 — dropped sharply from $80 a share into the $40 to $50 range. Players made yes-no bets, and the virtual dollar drop reflected increasing doubt that the store would open on time. Indeed, Best Buy’s first store in China opened late, in January 2007, but the warning signs from the prediction market helped prevent further slippage. Mr. Severts noted that prices in a current prediction market — betting whether new offerings from its Geek Squad service will be introduced on time in June — are in the $90 range, an encouraging sign. Best Buy plans to move beyond pilot projects in prediction markets to involve more workers throughout the company, starting next month. “It helps on two fronts, the speed and accuracy of information, so that management can move faster to deal with problems or exploit opportunities,” Mr. Severts said.

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Previously: Do Google’s enterprise prediction markets work?

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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • 50% of our prediction market luminaries have a MacBook.
  • STRAIGHT FROM OUR TRUISM DEPARTMENT: Money buys happiness.
  • Ron Paul (R) and Barney Frank (D) ally together to attack “the practical hurdles of the federal law, known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, rather than its legitimacy”.
  • Clicking on the “SPHERE: RELATED CONTENT” button, at the bottom of each Midas Oracle post, will bring you a list of external webspots.
  • FRIGHTENING: Jed Christiansen’s prediction market blog was briefly overtaken by web spammers, who inserted invisible links to their commercial sites so as to game the Google PageRank system.
  • InTrade ditch market-leader Bloomberg for low-cost, second-tier data provider eSignal.
  • Drawing a parallel between our reluctance to seek advice and the experts’ reluctance to take the market-generated probabilistic predictions in an un-discriminating, un-critical fashion

Enterprise Prediction Markets … Without Office Politics

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Google&#8217-s Bo Cowgill, as reported by IT Business:

[&#8230-] If you let people bet on things anonymously, they will tell you what they really believe because they have money at stake. This is a conversation that&#8217-s happening without politics. Nobody knows who each other is, and nobody has any incentive to kiss up. [&#8230-]

[In one example,] the market was predicting that [a project] was behind. A manager says what&#8217-s going on here, &#8230-starts investigating and finds some glitches. [&#8230-]

Read the previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:

  • Ratted by his bank, sex-addict New York governor Eliot Spitzer (alias “Client 9”) resigns.
  • BBC’s coverage of politics is dull like taxes, death and German sausages.
  • Never talk when you can nod, and never nod when you can wink, and never write an e-mail because it’s death. You’re giving prosecutors all the evidence we need.
  • Is Justin Wolfers a libertarian? Probably not.
  • The information technology that caught Eliot Spitzer
  • Eric Zitzewitz’s 10 minutes of fame
  • Fun with conditional probabilities