Our CEO, Linda Rebrovick, recently sat down with Erin Lawley of the well-regarded NashvillePost.com for an interview. Erin summarized the function of our Foresight platform nicely but also got Linda talking about our important role in the Nashville technology corridor.

Erin on what we do:

Consensus Point companies — clients include General Electric, Best Buy and Qualcomm — can post a question to the online market, such as whether a particular project will be completed on time. Participants then can answer the question, betting a certain number of points on an outcome depending on their confidence level. Correct answers return more points, lead to higher standings on the market’s leader board and possibly other rewards or incentives for the participants while helping executives more effectively manage the business.

And an excellent first Q&A:

How do prediction markets differ from other types of forecasting models or decision tools used in business today?

Traditionally, all these prediction models are algorithms that take historical patterns that say this is what happened in the past, and we’re going to extrapolate that this pattern will continue in the future. That’s how forecasting systems have worked forever. And they’re very successful when you have a historical pattern.

What they can’t do is detect early-warning indicators that, while this has always happened in the past, something’s changed. So that’s the power of what we have, the ability to be your eyes and ears on the ground  every minute, minute by minute. So as the leader of a company, I know I’ve got the facts as they stand today as I’m trying to make a decision.

Other good questions:

• What is the user experience like for market participants?
• What incentives do companies use to encourage participation and correct answers?
• Do you have any good examples of how a prediction market has helped one of your customers?

For Linda’s answers, go read the whole interview. But we’ll leave you with her thoughts on our local impact:

We’ve got to get more companies like this in Nashville. This is a traditional California company. The California [venture capitalists] understand these companies and put money behind them. The California companies network the executives and help each other get into other [opportunities]. We don’t yet have that here.

I was chair of the Nashville Technology Council, and I’m on the Nashville Entrepreneurship board. I’m trying to get us to become a hub of some sort as it relates to new and exciting innovative social media and enterprise 2.0 technology. This is the next wave, and we ought to have these companies in Nashville.

It’s fun to be at an exciting technology company with a great CEO! Especially fun because we have great customers. If you’d like to become a great customer, contact us.

We attended last week’s Nashville Technology Council Member Breakfast, where the big news was Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s visit to Nashville. Seeing Mr. Ballmer show off Bing and other new Microsoft technologies was certainly impressive, but the relevance of the other speaker, Abbie Lundberg—the former Editor-in-Chief of CIO—wasn’t lost on us, either.

Ms. Lundberg referenced a session at the National Retail Federation’s recent Retail’s BIG Show 2010 expo in which Wal-Mart’s EVP and CIO Rollin Ford told attendees that corporations don’t have a lot of secrets anymore. So the only competitive advantage becomes speed and getting from point A to point B faster.

Lundberg also revealed that, as of December 2009, surveys indicated that 40% of CIOs would increase in spending on IT. This dovetailed nicely with an MIT study that demonstrated that IT-savvy firms are 20% more profitable (if you can help us cite the study, please let us know in the comments).

Our prediction markets platform not only helps companies get from point A to point B faster, it helps them understand why arriving at point B is better than arriving at points C, D, or Z. We offter tremendous business value for companies having difficulty finding that competitive advantage.

Maybe our ability to offer innovative competitive advantage through technology is why CIO decided to write about our customer success with Motorola. If you’re a CIO increasing your IT spend this year, you might consider investing in prediction markets. We recommend Foresight.

Correction: Apparently, we misread our notes or were typing too fast. As originally written, we incorrectly stated that CIOs were projecting spending increases of 40% in 2010. Our apologies to Ms. Lundberg.