GAMIFICATION AND THE INNOVATION PROCESS

IDEASCALE  WHITE  PAPER

Crowdsourcing  is   an   engagement  method  

4EXPLORING  CROWDSOURCING  AND  RISK

In 2010, it was estimated that $100 million was spent on gamification. It was also predicted that that

number would rise to $2.8 billion by 2016. Here in 2013, when the number has risen to $242 million,

it certainly seems possible that individuals as well as more and more organizations will be looking to

gamify their open innovation systems (as well as numerous other processes).

But that’s just the result. What does gamification have to do with the open innovation process?

The main goal when applying a gamification strategy to something is to increase engagement, but

how much does an organization or program stand to gain when applying gaming scenarios to their

innovation initiative?

Consider this:

• One study by Findlay and Alberts showed that the percentage of contributing members in a community

shifted, once a gamification strategy had been applied to the system. Without a gamified experience, 68% of

the community was composed of contributors (as opposed to merely observers), once the gamification

strategy was applied, however, the number of contributors shot up to 83%. That same study showed the

average number of posts per user increased from 1.5 posts/user to 2.3 posts/user with the gamification

strategy.

• The Keas employee wellness program is a system that encourages employees to create healthier, happier

lives. When Keas gamified their approach, their user engagement improved 100x (as an order of magnitude).

• IdeaScale recently launched an enhanced badge gaming system and when the client introduced it to their

existing open innovation platform, engagement increased and community members even began changing

their nameplates to reflect their community standing.

There are many ways to make open innovation challenge-based or to incentivize player behavior.

Although, anyone would recommend exploring numerous paths towards engagement, there was a

study that suggested rewarding users for submitting ideas that generate the highest level of

interaction actually improves not just engagement, but idea quality by 40%. If there is a way to allow

an open innovation community to build on, comment on, or contribute to ideas, then rewarding

members who activate that sort of behavior generally improves the ideas as well as engagement. A

synopsis of that study’s findings exists here.

How do you improve engagement? Can gamification affect other aspects of innovation as well?

2GAMIFICATION  AND  THE  INNOVATION  PROCESS

Gamification and the Innovation Process

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