Serious Games for Business: Using Gamification to Fully Engage Customers, Employees and Partners

Using an innovative multimedia format, this book turns the inevitable alphabet soup of gamification terms into a gourmet delight with true business substance. Readers will no doubt find themselves exploring the book's concepts through the 60+ videos, articles and lectures cited with tiny URLs and smart phone QR Codes, all of which jump off the printed page to provide further insights from recognized experts.

In the business world, gamification has typically leveraged badges, points and leaderboards in the hopes of engaging people. This falls far short of the potential of what gamification can do for businesses. On one end of the spectrum, businesses can use game design techniques in ways that are not overtly game-like to fully engage customers, partners, and employees. When well implemented, gamification can transform a work culture by cultivating deep emotional connections, high levels of active participation, and long-term relationships that drive business value. On the other end of the spectrum, businesses can utilize strategy games, simulation games, and role-playing games as means to teach, drive operational efficiencies, and innovate.

In this book you will explore the many aspects of using gamification in business and find case studies describing how organizations have embraced social collaboration using playful design to reap tremendous value.

Don't just read this book-experience it!

About the Authors

Phaedra Boinodiris is a Serious Games Program Manager at IBM where she is crafting IBM’s serious games strategy for the public sector including government entities, education, and healthcare. She is the founder of the award-winning INNOV8 program, serious games designed to teach business process management. INNOV8 is being used in over 1,000 schools worldwide, and is now available for public consumption. She also produced IBM’s first Smarter Planet game, CityOne, a city simulation that shows how companies can evolve and compete by solving real-world business, environmental and logistical problems with industry and software solutions. Boinodiris was honored by Women in Games International as one of the top 100 women in the games industry.

Peter Fingar, Executive Partner in the business strategy firm, Meghan-Kiffer Research, is an independent analyst, author, management advisor, and one of the industry’s noted experts on business process management. Peter has been providing leadership at the intersection of business and technology for over 40 years. Peter is widely known for helping to launch business process management (BPM) with his book, Business Process Management: The Third Wave. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and his latest of 15 books include, Business Process Management: The Next Wave, about the use of distributed intelligence in business; and Smart Process Apps: The Next Breakout Business Advantage.

Fingar is one of the industry's noted experts in component-based e-Commerce and an internationally recognized author. As Technology Advocate for EC Cubed; he is a liaison with standards organizaations.

Tom Grant has been researching various aspects of the biology of the platypus for over three decades, including environmental assessment studies involving the species. He is an environmental consultant and Visiting Fellow in Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of New South Wales.