Tom Davenport on Prediction Markets + Mark Turrell's viewpoint
Recently I came across a discussion group entry on prediction markets by Tom Davenport, a professor at Babson, and author of The Next Big Thing. His comments on prediction markets are here. My comments are... waiting to be authorized for publication. They were great ones, I assure you. I'll keep an eye on the posting and hopefully remember to add them.
Labels: Front End Innovation, prediction markets
posted by Mark | [Permalink]
1 Comments:
This comment is cross-posted from Tom Davenport's blog:
I would like to second Mark's Turrell's comments. I am very much in favor of Predictive Markets theoretically, but the devil is in the details of implementation.
In one Fortune 100 client of mine, I knew Predictive Market evangelists who spent two fruitless years looking for a practical application. (They certainly tried hard; the task was even written into their annual performance reviews.) I sat through one meeting trying to help them pitch the method, and determined that the requirements for success are quite specific. My innovation group filed away the technique as interesting should the right application come along, but too limited for prime-time.
In the pilot test that the evangelists had conducted, Mark's words were absolutely apt--people rarely returned to the site after the initial curiosity (generally sparked by a business magazine puff piece).
This client is also an Imaginatik customer, with thousands of users who collaboratively submit innovations in response to various challenges. The contrast is striking in terms of results between the two approaches to tapping the wisdom of crowds. Imaginatik's users keep coming back regularly.
I assume that the business press writers who bring anecdotes of successful Predictive Market implementations have simply been fed a list of the very limited number of cases in which the tool has proven useful.
2:50 PM
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