Prediction markets are only effective if a lot of people participate. What are the best ways to encourage more traders and trading within internal company prediction markets?

In order to boost participation in prediction markets, management must support the use of the markets and promote the use of the markets and the outcomes within the company. Many employees may not see the benefit in the markets. Not only does playing the game take up time spent doing actual work, but the results are neither guaranteed to be accurate nor provide any new insights on a project that cannot already be explored by the project team. As a result, if the company really wants to utilize the markets to influence business and provide another way of looking at future occurrences, management must align the activities and goals of the company and project teams to include the use of the markets. This doesn’t necessarily force employees to use the markets, but incorporates the use of the markets into the company culture. Once ingrained, the culture can build around the use of the markets and will eventually become accepted by most in the company.

Another way to increase participation is to include additional social activities into the market. Instead of solely being a place to buy and trade, the markets should include areas where employees can chat, blog, or post messages about the topics. This provides a place for people to share knowledge and offer contrasting viewpoints, and ultimately increases the group think aspect by establishing an environment for brainstorming with a wide range of employees with different backgrounds and expertise that might not exist at a traditional business meeting where everything present has similar focus.

Many employees are motivated by things other than money. While money is always a nice prize, many times employees would rather receive other perks. Managers must be aware that not all employees are motivated by the same things and that often times a prize other than money is more motivational. As was realized with the GPM, the receipt of a t-shirt and bragging rights was more important to the winners than the cash prize. Some additional perks to motivate participation and to encourage maximum activity are: paid leave, change to win paid vacation trips, publication of winner’s articles or pictures in a company newsletter, winner’s picture on wall or in a hall of fame, reserved parking spots, or tickets to an event. These rewards could increase motivation to participate and allow participants to boost reputations.

What are the similarities and differences between a community-driven product development process and a traditional product development process within a firm?

Differences:

·         Community-driven product developers can get immediate consumer feedback and suggestions.

·         Community-driven product developers can generally release prototypes and ideas to a larger audience—and to an audience that feels connected and invested in the company and is more likely to offer constructive feedback because of that tie.

·         The free-flow of ideas generated through crowd-sourcing sites such as Threadless enables the community to brainstorm and generate ideas greater than any single person would have or that a team would have developed in a longer amount of time.

·         Traditional product development can include in-depth, closely monitored phases of brainstorming, market analysis, market testing, and modifications while a community driven process simply requires the introduction of an idea and analyzing feedback. This effort can take a lot of time and money and success depends on the method of audience selection.

Similarities:

·         Both have a lot of considerations in potentially alienating consumers when changing the product or some aspect of the business.

·         Both processes have testing stages in order to figure out which products will sell.

·         Both processes base modifications and development off of consumer feedback.

LinkedIn's Strategic Way Forward

One issue LinkedIn is facing is whether or not to blur the lines of social and professional media sites. Personally, I think that LinkedIn should stay professional. There are many reasons to keep work and personal life separate. Nevertheless, today’s society and the rapid emergence of new technology has led many to believe that merging the two does not have negative consequences.

Regardless of my beliefs, if LinkedIn wishes to pursue social media interaction on its site, I think the site must give users the choice. If there was a way that users could opt in or out for allowing their profile to interact with other networks would be a way that LinkedIn could progress towards cross-network interaction while still allowing users to maintain a purely professional profile if desired. A lot of user outcry with Facebook has been that users do not feel that they are in charge of personal information. LinkedIn must realize there is demand for consumers to feel in charge of such information and to be able to make changes as desired.

Whether or not LinkedIn chooses to interact with other networks, it must continue to introduce new features or people will be bored and will not want to join or continue using the site. Although the site has high switching costs for users, adding functionality to the site is another way to keep users active and to increase the switching costs. Enticing companies to hold competitions in which users can compete to solve a company’s problem is one way to keep users interested. The companies would also benefit from having new ideas.

Although I may have an old way of thinking, I believe social and professional sites should remain independent. As a result, LinkedIn needs to look into ways to increase current functionality, offer new ways for users to interact with companies, and provide benefits to the companies that pay for the services.

Since anyone can easily edit Wikipedia, how is it that good (and usually accurate) content emerges?

At this point in time, I do not think that I will ever be involved in updating or tracking Wikipedia updates. To me, my beliefs and thoughts are something that I will discuss with friends or among friendly conversation, but I have no intention of trying to get my beliefs or ideas documented into a global forum. I do not want to spend time updating a definition that others can delete, nor do I want to try and argue with someone why my thoughts should stay in the context of the definition. Frankly, there are other ways that I’d rather spend my time.

Nevertheless, I do see the benefit that Wikipedia provides and although I do not directly pull up the site to find the meaning of a topic, I will navigate to the site if a search result pops up through my Google Search (which it typically will as the first result). After reading the Wikipedia post my question is usually answered. I realize that reading the information could be inaccurate because of the ability for anyone to modify a definition, but I have never found myself to have been mislead by Wikipedia content. Part of that reason is that I wouldn’t know if I was being mislead or not since I’m having to look something up in the first place.

I think the fact that Wikipedia is able to maintain accurate information even though it can be edited by anyone is very intriguing. Part of the reason for its accuracy is that there is an administrator monitoring pages. This person is likely to have some knowledge on the subject and is able to determine whether or not a change is completely irrational. This person has the ability to remove comments or even the whole post. There are also people that handle disuptes. Secondly, the people that are going to invest the time and effort into making changes, tracking those changes, defending those changes will be passionate about defining something. Those are people that see value in sharing their thoughts about a topic. Some may see the participation as a way to stay current in their fields, be able to use the activity as a means to progress professionally, or may even be a way for someone that has a great passion for a topic, but is not directly involved professionally in that arena, have input into the given field/industry/specialty.  Whatever the reason and motivation, the people making modifications are able to track what happens to the post, make comments, suggestions, and re-edit to make it read to their liking.

There is an emotional connection that editors with Wikipedia, whether it is defending their name/thoughts or ensuring that people around the world have up to date data. While the source may not be considered a legitimate source in the research industry, whatever the connection between the editors/monitors may be, that is what makes Wikipedia successful as a trusted source of information for the everyday Internet searcher.

Social Media and the need for businesses to monitor the spread of user-generated content

In the days before the explosion of social media and customer’s opinions being spread across the Internet, businesses had to focus their public relations efforts in different areas. Years ago, a bad company experience might result in the customer telling a few friends and those friends telling a few friends. At most an article or magazine might have heard about an article and published for a wider audience. However, these days businesses have a whole new realm of PR to tackle. Social media has become a way for people to spread a thought or experience to hundreds or even millions of people in the matter of minutes. A customer’s bad experience can be broadcast at an exponential rate. If businesses are not monitoring or do not respond correctly, sales, stock prices, and profits can decrease as word spreads around the world. Below are some things companies can do to track social media and reduce negative impressions.

- Company must be tracking social media to determine if there is an issue. This can be done by using a department dedicated to social media, tasking an existing department such as marketing or PR, or having employees track like was done by United.

- Admit to mistakes if the company is at fault. No one likes a company that will not admit to making a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes and our culture is very forgiving for those that are able to confess and learn from those mistakes.

- Make it right. If the company is at fault, they should by all means make the wrong a right and convey that action to the followers that are reading the social media. Even if the company is not completely at fault, it should portray to readers that it has made attempts at compensating the victim in some way. This proves to readers that the company cares about customer satisfaction even if the incident is not 100% company fault.

-    Prove that you’re doing something to fix it. A company should not just fix the issue at hand, but should prove to readers that the company is implementing practices to prevent the issue from happening in the future.

-    Hire employees that believe in the company’s mission and have that mission aligned to best serve the customer. Happy employees and those that believe in the company and its mission, combined with a corporate culture that seeks to add benefit to customers will help align company actions to provide great customer service. In the event that an issue arises, the employees can hopefully help customers in a manner that will prevent the customer from being so angry that he/she wants to lash out through social media.

How does Hulu’s value proposition differ from traditional broadcast and cable television?

Depending on the role played in the television industry, Hulu offers different value propositions. As a viewer, Hulu is convenient in that I can watch the last 4 episodes without commercial interruptions and far less advertising minutes in general. Hulu has also made agreements with online social networking and other websites to allow me to view content from those sites without ever having to go directly through Hulu. This agreement enables easier access for customers and more potential “hits” for Hulu. As a viewer, the Hulu site is intuitive, clutter free, and is continually updated satisfy user feedback. Furthermore, the site offers me recommendations of other shows that I might enjoy. In addition to being convenient, Hulu is also cheap. When compared to its competition, Hulu is free to viewers whereas competitors such as DVR and TIVO require additional costs and cable on-demand requires a cable subscription.

Hulu can also be valuable to other parties. As a content owner, having shows available on Hulu allows potential viewers/followers to adopt a show and demand to view the episodes. As an advertiser, Hulu enables a company to execute a more targeted, interactive, and effective advertising experience. The site allows advertisers to target viewers in different ways through one big up front ad or smaller ads throughout the episode. Depending on what option is chosen, the company can display different ads. Hulu also tracks the advertisements and options picked by viewers in order to analyze the interest level in a product that stemmed from a certain “demographic” of viewer based on the show. Viewers can also rate commercials which could provide considerable feedback to the advertisers.

One big bonus that Hulu offers is for people to migrate away from cable and watch TV solely through the Internet. It’s a great concept and very intriguing for people like me that can’t stand my cable provider or the service (or lack thereof) that it provides. Nevertheless, I personally do not see myself migrating from cable to Hulu anytime soon. One reason is that my Internet will still have to come from the cable company as FIOS and other options are not viable where I live. In addition, with Hulu I can only watch the last few episodes whereas my DVR can hold as many shows as there is open space. I’m not saying that I will never convert, but for the time being, Hulu remains a tool that I use only if my DVR does not record one of my favorite shows or I am looking to watch an episode that I have heard about through friends or in the news.

What were the key factors behind Google’s early success?

Google’s early success can be attributed to many different attributes. The company culture which supported innovation and the desire to stretch the limits to introduce that innovation to the market is one reason that Google was able to get out in front of the competition and continue to lead the market.

In all reality, search engines are fairly easy to replicate products so Google had to continually innovate and release those innovations ahead of the competition. In order to support innovation, Google’s culture allowed engineers to spend 20% of their time working on a project of his/her choice. This allowance probably helped employees stay motivated and also allowed Google to leverage the intellectual capital. Because most of the project work was done in teams, the “free reign” that engineers had to pursue other interests and potential projects enabled Google to see a variety of ideas and use those to develop new products.

In addition to the culture, Google realized that profit could be made based off of clicks per ad and that one way to ensure that ads reached the right audiences were to use search history to determine which ads were seen by which customers. The company continued to refine revenue models in order to best serve customers and profitability.

In my opinion, Google has always been able to stay a step ahead of consumers and that quality has led to their success both early on and today. Google continues to provide users with the services they demand and at the same time releases services that consumers did not know that they even wanted. Nevertheless, those new products establish a benchmark for the market and leave other companies trying to create similar offerings. Google’s innovation continues to make it the market leader.