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theodor_foerster
Employee
Employee
3,640

“Games are the new normal” – Al Gore, 2011.



Al Gore describes a common impression, also becoming reality in enterprise software. Gaming will be part of any enterprise software to some extent anytime soon. This so-called gamification is about bringing gaming mechanics into non-gaming applications. In innovation management gamification is used to improve the users´ contributions regarding quality and quantity. In fact, it is expected that users of a gamified innovation management system will participate more often with high-quality contributions. Contributions can be ideas, comments and idea evaluations.

In the study Game:on, gamification has been applied to SAP Innovation Management. The cornerstones of Game:on are:

  • Innovation Points – Users receive Innovation Points for activities in the system
  • Leaderboards – Users are ranked in leaderboards based on their overall and campaign-specific activity measured by their Innovation Points
  • Levels – Users can achieve level of experience based on their collected Innovation Points
  • Badges – Users receive badges for exploring the system and achieving particular challenges (for instance receiving 20 comments in one day on his/her idea will result in the top story badge for the particular idea author).

These mechanisms will help to improve the quality of the contributed content and the users´ activity in the innovation management system. The central aspect of Game:on are the Innovation Points, which reward especially high-quality contributions. For instance users receive additional innovation points, if their idea has reached a new stage or if their idea has received a specific number of positive community votes. As the Leaderboards are calculated per campaign as well as for the overall system, every user is motivated to contribute and every user has a fair chance to be recognized on a campaign-specific Leaderboard. Badges and Levels encourage new users as well as experienced users to explore the system and to contribute to the system constantly. Finally, sharing the achievements in the company´s social platform such as SAP Jam will attract other users and keep their level of engagement high.

This is a post of the Let´s talk SAP Innovation Management, which shall drive discussion about innovation management inside and outside of SAP. We are very keen on getting your thoughts and feedback in all aspects of innovation management.

All articles of the Let´s Talk SAP Innovation Management Series can be found here.

About SAP Innovation Management

The SAP Innovation Management solution helps companies foster innovation, capture it, and effectively and rapidly turn it into value generating initiatives that deliver continued industry leadership.

Comprising unique products, services, processes, methodologies, and governance, the SAP Innovation Management solution helps establish a sustainable creative culture that overcomes departmental silos and unleashes the power of innovation.


For further information about SAP Innovation Management please click here

5 Comments
holger_knospe
Advisor
Advisor
0 Kudos

Hi Theo,

thanks for sharing this information.

I like the quote of Al Gore very much "Games are the new normal".

And of course, for applications like this, that require and demand a lot of creativity from its users, gamification is a very good way to keep them motivated.

Regards

Holger

Former Member
0 Kudos

Innovation Points..Leaderboards..Levels..Badges..  sounds like boy-scouts to me..

What about people who aren't attracted by that?

A corporation is a social market place. People are not there to chase points and levels, but to interact, talk, flirt and meet and impress potential mating-partners. Working imh experience is the one side-thing you have to do.

My theory is:

Chasing the stick is just one end of the spectrum (the economicly countable one). On the other end is the social entity which usually happens by "chemistry" but not by numbers.

If you concentrate on the one side and ignore the other you will be successful to about 50%.

My idea: Points..Leaderboards..Levels..Badges.. are not enough. You have to add flowers, hugs, kisses, aversion alerts and social&emotional referees of trust. Then you'll get the other 50% too.

holger_knospe
Advisor
Advisor
0 Kudos

Hi Ingmar,

An application that demands its users to add value by sharing creative ideas lives from an active community and therefore the product has to provide the owning company possibilities to support this community.

I agree that leaderboards, levels and badges only form the foundation of a gamified product.

My guess is that you’ll never get 100% of the user with any type of gamification, as not every user likes badges, leaderboards, hugs, etc.

Nevertheless you are right, spreading your efforts on different ranges of gamification and community is benefitial to get more users.

Especially gamification can require much effort from the owning company (avoiding cheating, inflation of points, creating missions, etc.).

So I think the mentioned topics from the Game:on study plus some of your mentioned soft functionality are a very good starting point for customers without having a high cost of operating the system.

Regards

Holger

volker_zimmermann
Discoverer
0 Kudos

Hi Theo, did you implement these gamifications more or less manually in the idea platform or did you leverage our SAP HCP gamification platform services to do so?

Thanks -

Volker

theodor_foerster
Employee
Employee
0 Kudos

Hi Volker,

The described features have been implemented as a POC. However, the interfaces internally are designed, that we can integrate with SAP HCP gamification platform easily. So leveraging SAP HCP gamification platform can be an option.

Cheers Theodor