Analyst: Over Half Of 'Innovation' Companies To Adopt Gamification By 2015

More than 50 percent of organizations that manage "innovation processes" for problem-solving will gamify those processes by 2015, according to a report from research firm Gartner. More and more companies have embraced gamification, or the use of game-like mechanics in non-game applications (e.g. offering points or achievements for completing tasks), in recent years, employing the approach in a variety of different settings. Gartner says gamification can help drive engagement, change behaviors, and stimulate innovation by accelerating feedback cycles, offering clear goals and rules of play, presenting a compelling narrative, and making its tasks challenging but achievable. The group also predicts that by 2014, gamified services for consumer goods marketing and customer retention will be as important as online services like Facebook, eBay, and Amazon. It says over 70 percent of Global 2000-ranked organizations will have at least one gamified application. Gartner points to Idea Street, a recent innovation game created by the U.K. government's Department for Work and Pensions meant to "decentralize innovation and generate ideas" from its 120,000 members, as an example of organizations adopting gamification. Idea Street attracted around 4,500 users who generated 1,400 ideas -- 63 of which were eventually implemented -- in the first 18 months after its introduction. Gartner also called the U.S. military's recruitment game America's Army another example of gamification intersecting with innovation. "Enterprise architects, CIOs and IT planners must be aware of, and lead, the business trend of gamification, educate their business counterparts and collaborate in the evaluation of opportunities within the organization," says Gartner analyst Brian Burke. "Where games traditionally model the real world, organizations must now take the opportunity for their real world to emulate games. Enterprise architects must be ready to contribute to gamification strategy formulation and should try at least one gaming exercise as part of their enterprise context planning efforts this year."