As I would expect with most of you, when I first heard about using games in the business world, I didn’t give it any real consideration. It’s one of those concepts that initially feel like someone is just out to make a little money.
But I was convinced by the guest speaker last night. The idea is simple: lets learn why people today spend so many billions of hours playing games (computer and other). Then use that knowledge to improve the performance of our employees in the business and “real” world.
Jane McGonigal provided many important business cases in which the concept of gamification (or Game IT) was inserted. One of my favorite is this. Jane informed us that 20% of the population in the world is without electricity. It is also true that soccer is a sport played almost everywhere in the world. Using these two facts, a company was able to build a ball that collects the kicks and knocks it receives and store this energy in an internal battery. This battery is then used by the boys and girls who played with it that day to provide lamp light by which to study later that night. That’s awesome.
SAP has entered into this full force by making it a major theme at the SAP TechEd 2011 event.
Looking forward to keeping an eye on this in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment