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SalesForce
My Starbucks Idea
Dell’-s IdeaStorm
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No need of trading technology to get feedback and suggestions from employees. A simple voting mechanism is more than enough.
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Previously: 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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[*]
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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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Via the New York-based Yahoo! Research scientist who was video-interviewed by the New York Post, the other day- Teck-Hua Ho &- Kay-Yut Chen:
New Product Blockbusters: The Magic and Science of Prediction Markets
Teck-Hua Ho &- Kay-Yut Chen
50/1 (Fall 2007): 144-158
New product innovation is a strategic business activity that involves significant financial resources and managerial attention. Most new product launches fail because existing methods are unable to forecast their commercial successes accurately. In this article, we describe a market-based method to address this gap. This method capitalizes on the power of the “wisdom of crowds” by allowing people to interact in organized markets governed by well-defined rules. The working of these markets relies on five scientific principles referred to as I4C (pronounced as “I foresee”). These markets motivate people to share information freely through a price discovery process. Prediction markets seek information aggregation from a large group of diverse individuals by encouraging active participation. We demonstrate the power of the markets with real application examples from a wide variety of industries.
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More:
The principles are incentive, indicator, improvement, independence, and crowd.
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New Product Innovation: NewsFutures, Inkling Markets, Consensus Point and Xpree can help.
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Share This:
Via the New York-based Yahoo! Research scientist who was video-interviewed by the New York Post, the other day- Teck-Hua Ho &- Kay-Yut Chen:
New Product Blockbusters: The Magic and Science of Prediction Markets
Teck-Hua Ho &- Kay-Yut Chen
50/1 (Fall 2007): 144-158
New product innovation is a strategic business activity that involves significant financial resources and managerial attention. Most new product launches fail because existing methods are unable to forecast their commercial successes accurately. In this article, we describe a market-based method to address this gap. This method capitalizes on the power of the “wisdom of crowds” by allowing people to interact in organized markets governed by well-defined rules. The working of these markets relies on five scientific principles referred to as I4C (pronounced as “I foresee”). These markets motivate people to share information freely through a price discovery process. Prediction markets seek information aggregation from a large group of diverse individuals by encouraging active participation. We demonstrate the power of the markets with real application examples from a wide variety of industries.
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More:
The principles are incentive, indicator, improvement, independence, and crowd.
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New Product Innovation: NewsFutures, Inkling Markets, Consensus Point and Xpree can help.
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Prediction Markets: Co-Creating An Organization’-s Future – (PDF file) – by Inside Knowledge Magazine’-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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I have created a “-Prediction Market Videos”- category in my “-Links”- page. I have listed there the InTrade and the Jed Christiansen webspots at YouTube.
Any other link(s) to suggest, folks?
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Jed Christiansen: What is a prediction market?
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Jed Christiansen: How can I use a prediction market for my business?
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Much, much better. Last year at the same time, in March 2007, I was selectively critical of some of the statements they did put in their (now old) version of their website. Adam Siegel has made good progress in mastering and conveying the problematic of enterprise prediction markets. I think that if Inkling Markets can truly deliver a service that can help companies mitigate business risks, and if they can prove positive results, then their client roll could be multiplied by a factor of 1,000 or so in the next 10 years.
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Adam Siegel:
Two years ago the only way to run a prediction marketplace was to roll your own or call a vendor/consultant and have them set up software and run markets for you. It took many weeks, often months. Today with Inkling Markets it take seconds. […]
[#1] Improve forecasting of key performance indicators
Track and raise awareness of key success metrics to identify and mitigate risk factors before it’-s too late.[#2] Expose product quality problems early
Identify design and production anomalies before a product (physical or virtual) is brought to market to avoid expensive repairs and recalls.
[#3] Predict risk to your supply chain
Run a “-web”- of markets about the risk factors to your supply chain to predict internal and external events that would cause inefficiencies or disruptions.[#4] Foster a culture of innovation
Determine which new ideas and process improvements will have real business impact vs. the “-nice to have.”-
[#5] Create new interactions with users
Build a dedicated community of users around a marketplace of questions relevant to your business area and brand. […]
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Adam Siegel (Inkling Markets CEO) in Forbes:
[Prediction markets] can significantly:
- improve forecasts of key performance indicators,
- provide a more realistic understanding of project-completion dates,
- identify quality-control problems early in the development life cycle,
- improve demand forecasts within the supply chain,
- and allocate resources more appropriately across research-and-development projects.
[I have edited the formatting of this excerpt.]
Thus, the Nokia executives are pretty secretive about it. Bad luck for them, there’-s a group blog on the Web that specializes on prediction markets and that digs deep. 
So, here’-s an inkling into Nokia’-s enterprise prediction markets. The material was gathered from the World-Wide Web.
Maximilian Kammerer (Nokia’-s Vice President CMO Global Customer Care) – (PDF file):
What technologies did you need for real-time information feedback among people working in 120 different countries?
KAMMERER: One sample element within the whole system is the Nokia Care Information Market. Like a stock exchange with a Web-based platform, people deal with information derivatives. They wager on the success of new strategies, innovations, solutions and projects. If their estimates change—the prices change. The price index creates an enormous transparency. The effectiveness of information markets relies on the fact that the collective intelligence is higher then every individual intelligence—even than that at management levels. Having understood that, our strategic decision-making is no longer purely based on historical data or expert opinions but on the intelligence of all concerned.
Translation: Nokia is embracing James Surowiscki’-s wisdom of crowds. It’-s my understanding that it’-s the first time that that is said publicly by Nokia.
Now, let’-s dig a bit. This interview was posted on the website of “-1492“-, a consulting firm from Austria. Now, the good question is…- Which prediction market firm does supply “-1492″- with software and advice (which are resold to Nokia)? Suspense, suspense.
ANSWER: GEXID
Congrats to them.
As everybody knows in the field, prediction market firms very often have to sign NDAs before undertaking clients, which means that the public gets to know the names of those firms only when their clients allow this information to be published.
APPENDIX: Nokia is also listed as a client on Consensus Point’-s website.
Robin Hanson:
Yes prediction markets are cool, Google is cool, and it is cool that Google had location data to show how location influences trading. But cool need not be useful. People are not asking the hard questions here: what value exactly is Google getting out of these markets, aside from helping them look cool?
Robin Hanson is a modern-day hero. Speaks the truth. Has a clear vision. Doesn’-t mind to act as a contrarian, now and then. Like Winston Churchill. Is a real leader.
Related Links: Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence From Google – (PDF file – PDF file) – by Bo Cowgill (Google economic analyst), Justin Wolfers (University of Pennsylvania) and Eric Zitzewitz (Dartmouth College)
Robin Hanson in a comment on Marginal Revolution:
This is important work for organizational sociology, but not for prediction markets, as this does little to help us find and field high value markets.
Finally, somebody who speaks the truth.
See also the comment of economist Michael Giberson.
Related Links: Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence From Google – (PDF file – PDF file) – by Bo Cowgill (Google economic analyst), Justin Wolfers (University of Pennsylvania) and Eric Zitzewitz (Dartmouth College)