Earlier this year, Nashville-based health care learning and research company HealthStream announced that Jim Daniell, one of its board members and one of the company’s earliest clients, would not stand for re-election to the board. At press time, HealthStream’s search to replace him was ongoing.

HealthStream has a female board director in Linda Rebrovick, a longtime IBM executive, KPMG partner and currently CEO of Consensus Point, an innovator in enterprise prediction market software serving the red-hot forecasting sector. Rebrovick’s connection to CABLE and other organizations positioned her well to help HealthStream’s board identify qualified female candidates—and she was only too happy to do so. With the new SEC regulations in place requiring that boards disclose efforts to nominate a diverse pool for open board seats, it was no doubt welcome information to the otherwise all male HealthStream board.

HealthStream CEO Bobby Frist expresses a strong desire to increase diversity on his board, in part by citing statistics that show a high correlation between board diversity and the performance of a company.

“We subscribe to that notion as a full board and as individual board members,” Frist says. “The candidate pool we’ve recently created exhibits a diversity of experience and background and thought.”

Frist says there have been “huge advances” in recent times in bringing qualified diverse candidates to the light, in no small part because of organizations like CABLE, ION and others that have ramped up efforts to organize resources in such a way that board searches can achieve greater diversity.

In part due to HealthStream’s success in its current search, Frist scoffs at the notion that there are not enough qualified diverse candidates to sit on boards.

“For me, that perspective also has a lot to do with what companies mean by being quali- fied, because you can be a student of business in many ways. You don’t have to have been involved in a big company. That, to me, doesn’t make you the best-qualified candidate. So there may be some problem in the way people are defining their qualifications that would open up the definition to more candidates if they thought of it slightly differently.”

While Frist agrees that the gears have moved “very slowly” in regard to corporate board diversification, he believes the overlay of increased SEC disclosure requirements, greater awareness and more education will result in a more rapid pace of change in the next three to five years than in the last few.

“With any major push like this, education comes first,” Frist says. “Change will follow.” That’s no guarantee that HealthStream will choose a diverse candidate in its current search. Nor should there be. “The key is to have a good and diverse candidate pool, and I’m confident we have achieved that,” Frist says. “But the number one priority is selecting the most qualified candidate from the broadest qualified pool. Think of it in those two ways, and I’m confident we’ll get the right person.”

There’s also a brief interview with Linda:

What can women do to improve the situation?

Women can make it known that they are interested. Much of it is just putting yourself in the candidate pool. Second, be sure that you have a development plan. Sit on a nonprofit board. A private company board. Work your way up. Attend a corporate board member event. Get a mentor, someone on a corporate board, to guide you through the type of development you need to become more prepared. Try to get in a position in your company where you are managing a P&L, because financial expertise is really important.

What can companies do?

Companies need to decide that diversity is a qualification that is a priority in their searches and then they need to tap into CABLE or ION [or other outlets] and identify candidates. Clearly, they’ll be very impressed if they take the initiative, make it a commitment and go find these resources.

Thanks to Nashville Post for covering this issue, and thanks to Linda for being a great leader!

For instance, here’s an interesting discovery from the Google Prediction Markets, originally proposed internally in December 2004:

Analyses … revealed that at every point in time, even as much as ten weeks away from the closing date of the market, the most expensive outcome was the one most likely to actually occur. It seemed that GPM’s markets, in other words, could quickly and accurately distinguish among possible outcomes, identify the one most likely to occur, and attach a high price to that outcome.

This is exactly what our Foresight platform does on a regular basis for our customers.

Regular readers might remember a few months back when we cross-posted one of his posts from the Harvard Business Review blog. You might also recall when we posted a presentation that Linda Rebrovick (our CEO) gave in Chicago at the Prediction Markets Cluster conference in Chicago last November.

Linda noted the following best practice examples in her presentation:

• integrate into enterprise processes
• nurture executive sponsorship
• go big or go home
• make accessible to all
• customize to your business
• make it part of your value proposition

We were struck how similar these examples were to the Six Organizational Strategies identified by McAfee:

• Determine Desired Results
• Prepare for the Long Haul
• Communicate, Educate, and Evangelize
• Move into the Flow
• Measure Progress, not ROI
• Show That Enterprise 2.0 Is Valued

Coming back to the commentary on GPM, McAfee continues:

Google’s prediction markets shared with all markets a fundamental property: the ability to generate highly valuable information by bringing people together who have little or nothing in common.

Okay, we don’t actually know how different Linda and Andrew are, but we’re pleased that our executive leadership understood key lessons before an interested commentator went to press with his book. It’s almost… predictive.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) May 31, 2009 — The Prediction Market Clusters in collaboration with Aurora WDC, Consensus Point, University of Chicago Gleacher Executive Center and many others announces the Prediction Markets Summit and Collective Intelligence Cluster Friday 6 November 2009 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Prediction Markets Summit and Collective Intelligence Cluster The venue is the stunning University of Chicago Gleacher Executive Center in Chicago, Illinois, USA. 

Learn how prediction markets, social media and collective intelligence networks are fundamentally altering the enterprise landscape. New forecasting techniques and technologies are driving executive decision making, leading collaborative forecasting and optimizing supply chain management. Engage with experts in knowledge markets that are reshaping all practices of knowledge management (KM), advancing innovation and propelling enterprise knowledge ecologies of the future.

“There is not much that any of us do that is more important than telling the company what we know.” Jeff Severts, EVP, Best Buy

We are thrilled several key scholars and thought leaders will join your cluster including:
Robin Hanson, Professor, Economist, Polymath, George Mason University
George Neumann, George Daly Professor of Economics, University of Iowa

In 2004 James Surowiecki published his now-famous book, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. For many this milestone introduced the era of collective intelligence for people, business, institutions, the environment and civil society.

“Thanks for organizing an extremely useful and informative workshop!” – Professor Tom Malone, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence

Testimonials

New ways to share, trade and aggregate information using Internet-based markets are exploding. These powerful Web 2.0 social media and network knowledge markets help companies, schools, governments and individuals to acquire and master ever-growing bodies of knowledge. These prediction market capabilities achieve mastery knowledge management (KM) and collective intelligence with stunning speed, efficiency and accuracy.

“Prediction markets are brutally honest and uncannily accurate.” – Geoffrey Colvin, Fortune Magazine

New collaborative market mechanisms and social innovations are driving collective intelligence networks. They resolve questions of science, technology, management, strategy, planning and policy far better than experts or management.

Collective intelligence inhabits the ceaseless flurry of self-correcting social exchanges, social networks and collective knowledge markets. They cover everything from politics and business plans to sports and new product features. Enormously potent, these social networks and markets generate new ideas and amass and refine knowledge and collective wisdom with blinding speed, low cost and accuracy.

Collective intelligence networks and knowledge markets have become commonplace in the enterprise. Top firms using prediction markets are Best Buy, Google, Microsoft, Eli Lilly, Abbott Laboratories and Yahoo! to name a few. Major analysts firms declare prediction markets critical to Enterprise 2.0 information and knowledge management portfolios.

“A company that can predict the future is a company that is going to win.” – Bernardo Huberman, PhD, Senior HP Fellow, HP Labs

Cluster sessions are focused, practical and conversational. They are for executives, directors, mangers, users and practitioners having immediate needs to apply collective intelligence networks and market mechanisms to advance enterprise business outcomes through mastery of collective wisdom.

Pricing and Availability

Registration for the Collective Intelligence Cluster is open and available now. All are welcome. The event participant tuition, including full-day experience, meals, refreshments, books, reception and materials is $399.00 Secure online event check-in and registration in advance required. Early-bird registration ($299.00) is open until 30 September 2009.

Prediction Markets Summit and Collective Intelligence Cluster

Collective Intelligence Cluster Sponsors

Sponsors of the Collective Intelligence Cluster are the world’s leading producers of prediction market software, services, exchanges and expertise. They supply continuous innovation in prediction markets and collective intelligence networks. They include Aurora WDC, ConsensusPoint, Mercury-RAC, Prediction Market Clusters and many others.

About Prediction Market Clusters

The Prediction Market Clusters, founded in 2004, are the global industry commons and open community for prediction markets and collective intelligence networks worldwide. The open, agnostic network is a focused collaboration of vendors, academia, traders, users, developers, markets, regulators and stakeholders. The goal is to provide awareness, diffusion, adoption and pull-through for enterprise, institutional and consumer prediction markets. The Prediction Markets Cluster is the worldwide Next Practices leadership network for collective intelligence networks practices, tools and theories. For more information, please visit Prediction Markets Cluster.

For more information, discounts and to sponsor the Collective Intelligence Cluster, please contact Jennifer Hulett, Tel: 714-458-3826 Fax: 714-572-3742, for details.