GAMIFYING INNOVATION:

How to engage your people in key

business challenges
Exago is a global pioneer in innovation management software and services, which uses collective
intelligence to solve key business challenges. From cost reduction and customer engagement to
behavioural change, we help companies unleash their people’s hidden potential to achieve real
results.
Our solutions are based on an idea market software and expert services that mobilise people and
harness their collective intelligence, their wisdom and voices. Our model is highly engaging and
efficient and sustainable over time.
Exago was founded in 2008, in Lisbon, Portugal. We’ve grown with our clients and partners
worldwide. With them, we’ve reached 19 countries on 4 continents (Europe, North and South
America and Asia), spanning a variety of industries from telecom operators and major retailers to
health organisations and energy suppliers.

Cover image by © Pawel Kadysz

GAMIFYING INNOVATION:
How to engage your people in key business challenges

By Pedro da Cunha and Francisco Rhodes Sérgio

August 2014

PEDRO DA CUNHA
CEO and co-Founder
[email protected]
A co-founder of Exago, he’s had a clear passion for innovation since he
began a career in researching robotics. He later worked as a consultant
and business manager in firms focused on information technology
and management consulting. He’s been involved in creatively applying
technology and developing progressive corporate ventures throughout a
career spanning multiple countries and industries.

FRANCISCO RHODES SÉRGIO

VP of Inbound & Sales – Latin America
[email protected]
Francisco leads inbound activities and business development for Latin
America. Before Exago, Francisco worked at Philip Morris International
and Deloitte. After having studied and worked on four continents and in
many business areas, he effectively advises companies on how to out-
innovate their competitors. He holds a BA in management and an MBA
from Vlerick Business School. Passionate about travelling, literature and
politics, he never misses an opportunity to join a football match.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 5

GAMI... WHAT? 6
1. WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?
2. WHO’S IN?
3. GAMIFYING INNOVATION

GAMIFICATION IN ACTION 10
1. ALL CAN PLAY, ALL CAN WIN
2. MAKING IT WORK
3. THE ULTIMATE GOAL

WRAP UP 14

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 4 | 14

INTRODUCTION
INNOVATION IS NO GAME
More than ever, companies need to engage their employees to assure
long-term viability. Yet, overwhelmed with information, people’s
attention spans have become shorter and shorter. Their willingness
to contribute to lateral activities has shrunk, particularly if these are
boring or create anxiety. And innovation is often no fun…or can it be?

Innovation is at the top of every organisation’s leadership agenda

these days. A recent McKinsey Global Survey found that 84 percent of
executives recognise innovation is very or extremely important to their
companies’ growth strategy.

Worldwide, businesses and organisations realise they may be doomed to

compete in a ‘red ocean’ where prices and margins sink downward. To
prevent this downward spiral, new ideas and outside the box thinking
are essential – to create differentiated business models, products and
services, as well as competitive cost structures. This is no time to roll the
dice and leave it all to luck.

But again, how can you draw your people’s attention to key business
challenges? Gamification has proved to be a powerful way to close this
focus gap. Below, we take you through gamification’s definition and
main features, presenting a model that efficiently adopts gamification
mechanics – making innovation initiatives appealing and successful.

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 5 | 14

GAMI... WHAT?
1. WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?
Since the dawn of civilisation, generations have learned through games.
From learning basic numbers and letters to eating and caring for others,
games help transform boring activities.

There’s nothing wrong with fun. In fact, in modern society – including

the corporate world – interacting and ‘playing’ with the Internet and
mobile apps are part of our daily routine. You may not notice it, but
most apps are actually productivity tools, with gamification to make
them more attractive.

Gamification is the use of game elements and design techniques in non-

game contexts. These elements (also called ‘game mechanics’) include:

Points | Quests | Avatars | Social Graphs (interaction) | Levels |

Progression | Badges

Design techniques are used to make participation fun, while non-game

contexts entail that the participant’s goal is other than success in the
game.

Anyway, a game is only a game when it’s voluntary. A handful of

gamification characteristics make the process fun, attractive and
engaging:

// Feedback (immediate and constant)

// Transparency (clear rules and visibility in the process and

progression)

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 6 | 14

// Progression (sense of moving forward)

// Social interaction (knowledge sharing, competition and collaboration)

// Recognition (badges, points and leaderboards)

2. WHO’S IN?
Gamification aims at making an activity enjoyable for participants, and
this pleasure is achieved when the participant is ‘in the flow’. Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi, an expert on the topic of happiness, describes ‘being
in the flow’ as ‘being completely involved in an activity for its own sake.
The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement and thought follows
inevitably from the precious one…’.

The ‘flow’ needs to fall between boredom (too easy) and anxiety (too
hard/confusing). The difficulty lies in making people feel in the flow.
And this becomes even more complex when the community isn’t
necessarily homogeneous – people sharing interests.

World of Warcraft players have a common interest – enjoying the game

– but the same doesn’t always happen for employees of Company X. The
challenge is how to construct the process so that everyone, or at least the
majority of people, will feel in the flow.

To engage as many players as possible, the designer must first

understand their different profiles. The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology
classifies players of multiplayer online games into categories according
to their gaming preferences. This framework works for most gamified
situations.
ACTING

rs
rs ieve
kille ach

PLAYERS WORLD

ers rs
ializ lore
INTERACTING

soc exp

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 7 | 14

 The four quadrants classify players using the profiles below.

Achievers
Players who prefer to get points, levels, equipment and other concrete
measurements of success in a game. They’re looking for rewards in the
status and prestige that comes with these items.

Explorers
Players that want to dig around within the environment. They don’t like
timeframes requiring them to proceed because they enjoy exploring and
discovering at their own pace (sometimes even more than progressing).

Socializers
Those who participate and play for the social aspect rather than the actual
game/challenge itself. These players are known as ‘hearts’. They like to
interact with other people, and the game is just a tool or means to this.

Killers
They want to compete for the sake of competition, so they seek to
vanquish and destroy other players. Showing everyone they are in control
of the situation is their biggest motivation for participation. Killers are
usually only 1% of the population, but they are the ones who participate
the most intensively.

All of us tend to be in all quadrants depending on the project at hand

and time in our lives. But identifying different players’ profiles helps
when designing a gamified process and more effectively reaching target
participants.

In a second step while shaping a process that is appealing and sustainably

engaging for the targeted participants, the designer identifies the engines
that will guide them. This means understanding which game mechanics
are more relevant to players’ specific desires (see the table below).
HUMAN DESIRES
REWARD STATUS ACHIEVEMENT SELF COMPETITION ALTRUISM
EXPRESSION

POINTS

LEVELS
GAME MECHANICS

CHALLENGES

VIRTUAL GOODS

LEADERBOARDS

GIFTING &
CHARITY

Source: Bunchball

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 8 | 14

The green dots refer to the most impactful game mechanics for each
human desire. The grey ones show other mechanics that also have some
relevance to specific desires.

All mechanics relate to the desire for status, achievement and

competition. These are essential to reinforcing the engagement potential
of gamified processes, so that people feel fulfilled by their activities.

3. GAMIFYING INNOVATION
The benefits collected from appropriately outlining gamified processes
are varied and very significant: Gamification develops more loyalty
in participants (whether they are customers, employees or others)
and more use. It can make a process go viral, radically increasing the
number of participants, and it creates a sense of identification with the
brand, activity, product or other elements of the process.

These benefits are of extreme value within innovation initiatives, as any

innovation manager well knows. In other words, gamification can play
a leading role in motivating people and compelling them to participate
and bring value to these initiatives – as leaders in innovation and
management, such as Stefan Lindegaard, Paul Sloane, Matthew May and
Michael Allen, have consistently pointed out.

When James Surowiecki wrote the bestseller The Wisdom of Crowds in

2005, he also highlighted the importance of gamification mechanisms
to develop participation and sustainability in ideation processes. The
benefits of gamifying innovation are also detailed by Gary Hamel
(ranked as the world’s most influential business thinker by The Wall
Street Journal):

“Try to imagine what a democracy of ideas would look like. Employees

would feel free to share their thoughts and opinions, however politically
charged they might be. No single gatekeeper would be allowed to quash an
idea or set the boundaries on its dissemination. New ideas would be given
the chance to garner support before being voted up or down by senior
execs. The internal debate about strategy, direction and policy would be
open, vigorous and uncensored.”.

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 9 | 14

GAMIFICATION IN ACTION
1. ALL CAN PLAY, ALL CAN WIN
A recurring misconception to overcome in innovation management is
that only experts can innovate. In a sense, this means it’s someone else’s
job, not mine. This makes it difficult to bring people into the process
and keep them motivated throughout the journey.

Typical innovation processes also too often fail in their communication

strategy. This can compromise the process and the trust between
organisers and participants (along with the possibility of efficiently
using a bidirectional mechanism to reinforce an alliance between these
parties), as well as the value of the incentives offered.

A weak communication plan or a misalignment with participants’

desires tends to make incentives less efficient – more than any tight
budget ever could. Processes that aren’t inclusive (where only creative
people can participate) and weak recognition and rewards systems (only
the best X number of ideas get a prize) are likewise the frequent culprits
of failure.

How can you gamify the innovation process to make it more inclusive,
attractive, enjoyable, efficient, transparent and sustainable? That’s
exactly what we’ve done.

2. MAKING IT WORK
Exago’s innovation management software and services use collective
intelligence to solve key business challenges. Our model uses
gamification mechanisms to sustainably engage participants –

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 10 | 14

harnessing their knowledge. From cost reduction and customer engagement
to behavioural change, we help companies unleash their people’s hidden
potential to achieve real results.

Step by step, we prepare the organisation for the process, by defining a

governance model, a communication plan and an incentives plan, as well as
assuring the alignment and commitment of leadership in the process. And
we make sure this preparation has an impact in the mid to long run.

The best governance models or a great communication plan attracts people

to participate, and a vast portfolio of incentives is a strong driver for
engaging people, but if the process doesn’t meet expectations and desires,
participants will soon quit. The dynamic energy fades away.

Our solutions, as a result, are carefully thought out to:

// Fulfil people’s desires;

// Be inclusive, motivating different types of players (remember the Bartle

Test framework?);

// Be transparent, so that participants understand the rules and constraints;

// Provide (immediate) feedback for people to remain engaged and

understand how they can improve their participation;

// Provide social interaction, since sharing, competition and collaboration

are decisive stimuli motivating people to contribute;

// Have clear incentives and recognition mechanisms;

// And, finally, be entertaining.

Our solutions also welcome all kinds of people. The most typical behaviours
remind us of the four gamer profiles:

// The achievers are the ones who participate the most with ideas and
comments to gather as many points as possible. They become huge
contributors;

// The explorers, who love to look around, are great at helping the
community discover other potential contributions. They submit insights
and diversify overall participation by doing everything;

// The socialisers stimulate others to enhance their contributions. They

submit many suggestions for improvement and love to check out what is
going on, as well as watch the leaderboards;

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 11 | 14

// Last, the killers love to compete for the sake of competition and are
very active in the selection and evaluation process of ideas. They are
great at differentiating what is good from what is less good, and even
greater at clarifying those ideas that are no good at all.

3. THE ULTIMATE GOAL

Exago’s model applies game design techniques and covers most
game elements we’ve identified: quests (challenges), points, avatars,
badges (opinion leader, etc.) and social interaction with the sharing
of knowledge and information. It also promotes collaboration (co-
creation, commenting and peer evaluation) and competition (the best
ideas are chosen by the crowd) – including a system to reinforce a sense
of progression and levelling up among participants.

All participants (investors) have access to the same amount and quality
of information. Everyone has the power to influence the evaluation
and selection process. The ideation management process becomes
democratic and has no hierarchical limitations.

Specifically, our solutions are based on expert services and a software

platform that mimics a stock market – an incentive-driven and
engaging corporate network that rewards and recognises participants.
This market mechanism is supported by a sophisticated algorithm,
providing infinite liquidity to the market at any given time. But it’s quite
simple and intuitive to participate. It’s inclusive and dynamic. Here’s
how it works globally.

I. Challenges definition II. Points assigned to III. Gathering points IV. Evaluating and
and publication participants selecting the best ideas

V. Committee’s approval VI. Prizes auction VII. Crowdtasking VIII. A new cycle begins
projects

Let’s go through it, in more detail:

I. The challenges. The business challenges are defined and

communicated to participants. The challenges have to be adjusted to fit
the organisation’s needs and participants’ motivations and aspirations.

II. Initial points assigned. All participants start with the same amount of
credits (a kind of entry bonus, like in a frequent flyer programme), that

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 12 | 14

they can use in the platform.

III. Gathering points. Everyone can participate by submitting valid ideas

and co-creating and adding value to other participants’ ideas. They can
also invest in the ideas they believe are the best for the organisation. The
more they participate and the more they create value, the higher they
score.

IV. Evaluating and selecting the best ideas. It’s a perfectly gamified
mechanism. People are driven to be truthful in their choices because
if they invest in a bad idea, they lose credits. The collective intelligence
of the community is gathered in this way, not only for idea generation
but also in co-creation and, above all, through evaluation and selection.
The wisdom of the crowd acts to handpick top ideas via participants’
investments.

V. Comittee’s approval. At the end of the cycle, the ideas that the crowd
believes to be the best are taken for a closing evaluation by the steering
committee. The committee decides on their implementation or non-
implementation based on the feedback provided to the crowd.

VI. Time to auction. Participants can then redeem the credits they
previously earned for real incentives. The redemption process is based
on an auction mechanism – again, a gamified system – that recognises
those who truly brought more value to the process.

Since people have different needs, the ‘incentives’ available can address
different motivations: from simple Amazon vouchers and charity
donations to training in specific areas.

VII. Crowd tasking. After the final evaluation (V), implementation

is ready to start. All are invited to join in and be recognised for their
added-value participation. Ideas become projects, and successful
projects can mean a higher return on investment.

VIII. A new game. A new cycle can begin.

The gamification mechanisms implemented by Exago’s solutions are a

demonstrated way to boost management of innovation initiatives within
a company or outside of it, delivering real results – be it increasing staff
motivation, conquering customer loyalty or crafting new and innovative
solutions.

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 13 | 14

WRAP UP
SO, INNOVATION CAN BE FUN AND SUSTAINABLE
Exago’s model proves that gamification can successfully be applied to innovation. As a
result, the ideation process becomes highly engaging, highly efficient and sustainable
over time.

These are precisely the main benefits gamification brings to innovation initiatives.
They become entertaining and inclusive to all types of players, appealing to specific
aspirations and motivations. Prediction markets make decision-making more
effective, harnessing the collective intelligence of all participants. Periodic cycles of
challenges and incentives assure users want to improve their participation and remain
involved over time.

Still, if you are ready to gamify the way you innovate – using a collaborative model
for the participation of a large and diversified group of people – always make sure
you have the right process and tools in place (communication, appropriate system of
awards and recognition, etc.).

Remember also that the challenges themselves, the positive incentives provided,
have to be aligned with a common and clear purpose that is publicly communicated.
The process has to be transparent and democratic. It has to turn the best ideas into
projects.

At the end of the day, compelling results are only achieved when you succeed in
engaging your people and multiplying that engagement through a strong and shared
sense of purpose. When making the future happen, this much seems sure: Companies
that take on gamification in their innovation efforts are ahead of the game.

GAMIFYING INNOVATION: HOW TO ENGAGE YOUR PEOPLE IN KEY BUSINESS CHALLENGES 14 | 14

exago.com
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