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Gamification in the Enterprise - 3 Key Considerations

By John Brunswick posted 06-29-2011 01:02

  

Gamificiton.  You cannot seem to read anything around the commercial social web and user adoption without running into it.  It's hot in the commercial space - and for good reason. What about the enterprise?

Taking concepts from Farmville, Facebook and other addictive experiences, the web is turning to game mechanics to drive user engagement.  In the enterprise we have long had "top posters" / "experts" identified based on performance within a platform.  However - just as rating, tagging and other capabilities have been added to enterprise collaborative platforms, it arguable that it may only a matter of time before more comprehensive gaming aspects become inherent to platforms.

As with various first passes at introductions of newer social enterprise capabilities, people are already taking sides in the debate around value.  Why the Future of Work is Play and Sixty-two Reasons Why "Gamification" Is Played Out point to virtues and pitfalls of the concept.  Dedicated software organizations are starting to produce platform addons to allow people to quickly add gaming elements into existing sites.

With this being said, success leveraging these tools can still be based on existing principles in light of the following considerations.

Distinctions and Considerations
Just as with Twitter and Facebook, some other considerations must be taken into account when evauluating how this technology can be used

  1. Leisure games are undertaken on the basis of intrinsic motivations
  2. There seems to be an assumption that all users will increase levels of engagement
  3. Questionable longevity is associated with Gamification

Motives
People have actively selected to engage in game playing vs taking an existing activity and transforming it into a game.  Is it reasonable to expect that people will become more engaged regardless of subject matter?  TJ Keitt from Forrester makes some excellent points in Product Managers Take Note: Microsoft is Using Serious Games to Product Test (And You Can Too), namely "Assess whether or not you can actually create a game".

Increases for All?
People that we generally think of as the "builders" / producers may accelerate production, but will that ultimately discourage others in the organization from contributing who historically have not participated?  In your enterprise key contributors may already be easy to spot and any expectation that gamification would extend knowledge production outside of this core group should be carefully handled.

Potential Fatigue
As Gamificaiton elements potentially enter our enterprise, is their effect short lived or can the heightened engagement sustain itself?  Only time will tell around potential fatigue, but even in the dot com world and tradiitonal gaming worlds, incentives can wear off it the game is no more than an intreuging fad.

Back to Basis
As with other functionality to support knowledge workers, it is going to be critical for companies to carefully develop strategies before launching functionality to drive heightend engagement.  The following list is by no means exhaustive, but some common cornerstones of strategy need to be applied.

Success, Failure and Measurement
Like other supporting technologies, we need to define a number of attributes about the intentions of the system to begin to understand if benefits are actually possible from this particular approach.  Will we be attempting to reduce cycle times?  Perhaps increase levels of education attained on various job specific skills?  What is today's baseline? etc.

Scope and Duration
Will the activity be targeted at a user level or will the activities also be geared to a user as part of a community?  It may be interesting to experiment with users acting in a self-contained manner where status of achievements is only revealed to them, opposed to being publicly measured against a group.  Will the game have a finite duration?

Possibilities
Regardless of what format this may ultimately gravitate toward in the enterprise, your business can most likely benefit from some of Gamification's core concepts.  It is likely that the following use cases could see further benefit from this model

With the above considerations opportunities for success and adoption can be more realistically governed as organizations begin to pilot similar social dynamics.



#gamification #Adoption
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