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On Tuesday, Brooke and I attended the Catalyst Girls in Tech conference. It was a wonderfully organized and star-packed event aimed at supporting the career development of women in the tech industry. Heather Harde, CEO of TechCrunch, keynoted, backed up by an impressive list of speakers and workshop leaders.

Two first impressions:

1. You know you’re at a women’s conference when the refreshments are smoothies and cucumber water.
2. There are an incredible number of amazing, confident and brilliant women in San Francisco.

To summarize for those who may have missed out, here are a few observations and highlights:

• My favorite talk was “The Art of Negotiation”, by Katherine Barr, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures. She focused on key negotiation tools originally created by the Harvard Negotiation Project, now taught in MBA programs all over the world. I was riveted. In my experience, women don’t always stand up for what they deserve or self promote in the same way men do (for more thoughts on this, check out Clay Shirky’s recent controversial blog post). Katherine’s enlightened approach was both sensitive to this and forceful. Interestingly, I noticed that in the negotiation exercises, women frequently converged on tit-for-tat strategies, perhaps more so than we would have seen in a male-dominated room. (Of course, this was not the strategy I employed when besting Brooke in 5/5 exercises – sorry Brooke, don’t mess with a game theorist!)
• Most women we spoke to who worked at startups were in the B2C space. One attendee hypothesized, and I agree, that this is because women are often the target audience of B2C products and services, and people founded or joined companies geared towards issues they feel strongly about and are engaged with in their daily lives. This is unfortunate though, as, “ninety per cent of the fastest-growing companies in the country sell to other businesses.” (Malcom Gladwell, Jan 18, 2010, New Yorker) I hope B2C doesn’t manifest as the women-led startup ghetto.
• While the business playing field seems to be evening out for men and women, the conference was a thought provoking experience in determining how this is playing out in the tech sector. There seemed to be a pervasive attitude in the room that we should ignore potential differences, and assume that in business men and women are the same. To me, this is a shame. I embrace the fact that men and women have different work, negotiation, social and management styles. There are advantages to each, and we should honor and leverage that to best advantage.

I loved learning from and networking with women tech community, and witnessing their broadening scope as professionals and innovators. A huge “thanks” to the women at Girls In Tech who are working hard to propel careers and raise awareness of women, not only as key contributors to this industry, but as leaders.

Clients often ask us what level of user engagement is reasonable to expect and how that level can be sustained over time. This isn’t a challenge unique to prediction markets – it’s a challenge for all applications that depend on user-generated content. Twitter is incredibly successful, but there is a huge gulf between the number of registered Twitter users and the number of active users.

Prediction markets ask participants to give: they have to place bets, share their knowledge. The key to user engagement is to make sure that users get just as much as they give. One of our clients, a large consumer products company, has struck this balance, achieving record levels of participation. Your first assumption might be, participants are actively betting so they can win prizes — but this is not the case. In a recent user survey, only 4% of respondents said they participated because of the opportunity to win prizes.

Instead, here is what these participants “get” out of being active in the prediction market:

Share valuable information with participants. 88% of survey respondents said that one of their favorite aspects of the market was learning about the innovation opportunities being explored by the client. 55% liked that it was an opportunity to learn about others’ points of view. One comment: “It is a good way to connect product development with the marketplace. I love it!”

Demonstrate to participants that their voice is being heard. The survey also found that sharing personal insights was a key motivator of participation for 40% of respondents. One comment stated: “With this tool, I feel like a part of the company as a whole, not just a member of my specific department. I hope this tool continues to be of value to the company in the future.”

Have fun. It’s no secret that games are a great way to engage people AND teach (it’s not all fun and games). That’s why casual games, such as Farmville, have taken off. And it’s why the military uses gaming to help prepare for combat. In addition to Crowdcast, our client also uses ideation software. However, the ideation software does not have nearly the same participation levels as Crowdcast. One reason for this is because Crowdcast provides a fun, competitive game experience, whereas the ideation software doesn’t. 42% of survey respondents liked being able to see how they performed relative to other employees. One participant’s comment: “I love having a friendly competition with my colleagues – we stop by each other’s desk all the time to compare how we’re doing!”

To find out more about how Crowdcast technology works, please contact us here: info@crowdcast.com.

I was reading a review of the new Palm Pixi on Gizmodo and I was struck by the classic new product issues that the review highlighted. First off, the product was released at $100 when its more powerful sibling the Pre is available for roughly the same price. So, Palm has likely hurt its sales more than anyone else. Second, the product appears to be riddled with quality problems. The Pixi is apparently really slow which totally misses consumer expectations for a $100 product. As a result, both Amazon and Wal-Mart are selling the Pixi for $25.

Could Palm have known? The answer is Yes. Palm invented the smart phone (remember PDAs). Do you think that Palm has some people who know about consumer preferences and behavior? Do you think that Palm has people who could have raised the alarm about the price in comparison to the already released Pre? Do you think Palm has people who could have pointed out the quality problems? You bet. So, why does this happen? Often, it is because the company has no way to listen to employees and then collect information in a way that is scalable across the company yet consumable by executives.

If Palm were to run Crowdcast solutions on a project like Pixi, then questions such as – When will the product really ship? How much will it sell for? How much will it cannibalize the Pre? and How many defects will it ship with? could have been asked. The answers to these questions would have been revealed as metrics, a date (Oct 09), a price ($25), at $25 it will hurt Pre sales by 50%, and unless we do something like fix the software before we ship it will be really slow.

It’s time that we started asking the crowd to drive new product introductions.

Universities represent our collective future. Although universities hand out diplomas to individuals, it’s our future doctors, CEOs and world leaders who toss up their hats at the end of the ceremony, right?

A recent CNET article highlighted an exercise at Singularity University’s executive program. Melanie Swan, a Silicon Valley hedge fund manager, had groups of students dream up revolutionary product ideas and also had them bet in an online prediction market on which group would get the most venture capital if their idea were real. The reporter writes:

Despite the fact that some technical problems got in the way, the point was made: prediction markets, given enough active participation, are increasingly seen as an excellent way to arrive at the answers to any number of questions, whether it’s sales figures, who will win presidential elections, or who will get the most VC funding. Indeed, the winning technology concept–a pill that could cure cancer–and team were accurately prognosticated by the market.

The university’s study is certainly forward thinking. That said, one should note that they’re not really running a prediction market – they’re running an idea market. This is an important distinction to make. When the students gear their bets towards ideas they think investors will find attractive, this means that the final outcomes of the market will be biased to the norm. We’ve discussed why idea markets are flawed and this is where Crowdcast differentiates its forecasting philosophy – gathering individual expertise to make more informed predictions around critical, quantitative metrics, rather than ideas.

Prediction markets everywhere are managing to find sure footing in uncertain times. From financial prediction markets on CFO, to the University of Iowa’s prediction markets on H1N1 virus outbreaks and vaccine levels, prediction markets are enabling us to get clarity around areas that were once opaque. Where else will we see the crowdsourced predictions put to work? The real-estate market? The struggling fashion industry?

Let’s put this very question to the wisdom of the crowds – send us your thoughts!

The anecdotes of prediction market pilots in major organizations are everywhere. Often they are tried in a small, almost clandestine manner within an isolated corner of a company by someone fairly junior. His forecasts tend to take on one of two characteristics – fun forecasts (sports, elections, etc.) or forecasts that are business related. The business-related forecasts are usually trivial and center on uninteresting metrics, or, more interestingly, they’re compelling enough that they get someone’s attention and the project is promptly killed. A junior person with an anonymous crowd can feel like a lynch mob to this middle manager who has previously ‘owned’ the forecast.

Where we have seen prediction markets thrive is where they get early senior support in the company. These executives vocally support a new way of forecasting and embrace the fact that there is knowledge that is not getting to their desks. The culture they support values and respects the opinions of their employees. They are not concerned about putting their key performance and risk indicators front-and-center for their reports to forecast and discuss openly. In these organizations, the adoption is high, sustained participation is healthy, and, yes, the forecasts are accurate. Management is able to make mid-course corrections more swiftly, and iterate product development in a more agile manner.

Prediction markets are not about ‘gotcha,’ they are about measuring and mitigating risks that are key to the business.

It is this ideal client, where the company is truly making a shift in the way they collaborate, who we look for in our engagements. This is one of the reasons we have made the decision not to employ a freemium model, offering a lower-end DIY version on our site and an enterprise-version to those who are so inclined. The inexpensive, ill-designed, and soft-pedaled implementations that result from this do a disservice to what we can really do for a company that’s all in.

Are you all in?

In the article Seeking a Shorter Path to New Drugs, Natasha Singer covers innovative methods that drug companies and researchers are using to improve drug discovery and commercialization. One of the projects she highlights is the Pharmer’s Market, our collaboration with MIT and Harvard that we announced last month. To learn more or to sign-up click here.

As we mentioned last week, Crowdcast is teaming up with Susan Scrupski and the 2.0 Adoption Council to launch a new prediction market today at the E 2.0 Conference here in San Francisco. Those attending the conference can submit their bets during the conference for chances to win prizes for the most accurate predictions.

Not at the conference? No problem. The market will be live at 3 pm PT and everyone interested in Enterprise 2.0 technology is invited to sign up here: http://surveys.crowdcast.com/adoption. To visit the market, please log in here: https://adoptionindex.crowdcast.com.

By using wisdom of the crowds, this prediction market is a new method of predicting how quickly 2.0 technologies will be adopted by enterprise businesses and will be a continuing measure of progress. The market is based on the 2.0 Adoption Council Index survey led by Scrupski and a team of market-leading professionals who are in the process of adopting 2.0 technology.

For more information click here!