That’s because “the use of emergent social-software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers,” provides rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing and integration between platforms, said Harvard Business School Professor Andre McAfee. Yet, experts said, many companies are finding that their employees are not taking advantage of these newly built platforms.
“The challenge with Enterprise 2.0 is that there is no human element to it. Software is dehumanizing by nature,” explained Chandar Pattabhiram, vice president of Worldwide Marketing for Badgeville. “Employees also ask, ‘What’s in it for me? Why should I change what I’ve been doing for x amount of years? It has worked fine.’ If an employer doesn’t have a good answer to those questions, their employees aren’t going to buy in.”
“Gamification is definitely universal in that it works across all different industries, can be applied to many different processes and can be used by employees of all levels,” said Michael Idinopulos, chief customer officer at Socialtext. “The challenge is figuring out how a game best works in a specific context to achieve a specific behavior. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Business and competition go hand-in-hand, experts say, and win-or-lose gaming helps spark the desire to be undefeated. Fail to close a sale? There’s a good chance your competitor did not.