Jenny Ambrozek reflects on prediction markets on her blog after attending the PM Cluster Summit last week in Chicago. Below is an excerpt from Amzbrozek’s blog.

Have Prediction Markets arrived as an Enterprise Knowledge Sharing & Innovation Platform?

A small and really smart group of people convened by John Maloney (at the Gleacher Executive Center in Chicago), on November 6 to explore the latest developments in collective intelligence and use of prediction markets.

For those new to prediction markets finding a public prediction market to explore is increasingly easy, for example see the Industry Standard and CFO Magazine. Andrew McAfee lists prediction markets as part of Enterprise 2.0. This Inside Knowledge Prediction Markets Masterclass (co-authored with colleague Victoria Axelrod) describes the prediction market landscape in 2008.

Why did I leave Chicago thinking that enterprise use of prediction markets to tap grassroots employee knowledge for forecasting, and in support of innovation is about to blossom?

Three reasons:

1. High Profile Proven Enterprise Prediction Market Applications

Exemplifying the time for new ideas and technology to find their way into widespread adoption first use of an enterprise prediction market is credited to Robin Hanson (George Mason University professor and Consensus Point prediction market platform provider Chief Scientist) and dates to 1990. 

The wider adoption of prediction markets by companies from Google to Best Buy, Cisco Systems, GE Healthcare, General Mills, Qualcomm and ArcelorMittal, is widely reported including in this New York Times articles. Friday Rami Levy, added to the list in explaining Motorola’s evolved use of a prediction market to filter ideas and speed innovation.

2. Technology Evolution

As a pioneering prediction market provider since 1994, Chicago Cluster sponsor Consensus Point hosts high profile clients Best Buy, Motorola and Qualcomm among others.

Each provider is carving out a niche and extending enterprise prediction market applications.  In the process platforms are evolving, made easier to use and integrate into day-to-day business processes.

3.  Growing Enterprise Understanding

The case has been made for the business value that comes from reaching out and engaging more diverse minds to solve business problems and co-create new opportunities. A host of books from James Surowiecki’s Wisdom of the Crowds (2004) to Yochai Benkler’s Wealth of Networks (2006), Dan Tapscott’s Wikinomics  (2006) and Clara Shih’s Facebook Era (2009) detail the trend. 

While enterprise prediction markets have been the province of innovative companies, the Chicago participants pointed to a diverse and expanding array of new applications.  

Putting prediction markets to work in enterprises demands a wide array of skills from technical understanding for making markets perform within the culture of an organization, to relationship building to engage participants and encourage contribution.  Quantitative skills + tie to business strategy + relationship building + technology are all essential.

On November 5 in Chicago, Dr. Robin Hanson, Chief Scientist of Consensus Point, and Rami Levy of Motorola, will be discussing the most effective applications of prediction and idea markets in business and government organizations at a lunch hosted by Consensus Point. Idea and prediction markets will become part of the internal DNA of the best organizations, as these solutions link human capital to organization results by providing leading indicators for the most important initiatives. Rami Levy of Motorola will share the business objectives and specific results of Motorola’s Thinktank Idea Exchange.  Dr. Hanson will share some specific approaches to structuring effective markets.

Robin Hanson, PhD., Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University and Chief Scientist, Consensus Point

Rami Levy, Technical Lead and Manager, Open Source Technologies team, and distinguished member of Motorola’s technical staff, Motorola, Inc.

For more information, contact Consensus Point at info@consensuspoint.com.

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.

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.

Ben Kunz just published a BusinessWeek article with several interesting insights about how the Dow Jones industrial average signaled the recent market turmoil - very much like how a prediction market aggregates intelligence about future events.

How did Wall Street know what would happen? It acted like a prediction market, a pool of intelligence that can foresee the future. Prediction markets are simply bets on ideas: What do you think something is worth, and more important, what will it be worth tomorrow? When groups of people bet on something, their combined intelligence is often remarkably prescient.

As you may know, this is something that James Surowiecki discusses extensively in his book, The Wisdom of Crowds.  Ben also talked with Robin Hanson about why the traditional prediction methodologies fail:

The trouble with humans, it seems, is that even when we’re smart, we have access to imperfect information and follow the groupthink of our peers. Because we often disagree with other groups, we band together and end up agreeing too much with our own teams. No single leader can overcome such biases and data gaps to predict with certainty whether an action will succeed or fail. But Hanson suggests markets can do just that.

(Ben Kunz is director of strategic planning at Mediassociates, a media planning and internet strategy firm. He is author of the advertising strategy blog.)