New Gartner Book Shows How Gamification Moves Companies Towards Digital Business

Gamification has become an essential part of digital business strategy as a way to change behaviour and overcome barriers of scale, time, distance, connectedness and cost, according to Gartner research vice president Brian Burke, the author of a new book launched today.

Gamification has tremendous potential, but right now most organisations aren't getting it right, according to Mr. Burke.  He said the road to gamification success is full of pitfalls, and many companies don't understand how critical player motivation is to success. Digital business leaders are using gamification to add value to their product offer, to increase employee engagement and to source crowdsourced innovation.

In the book "Gamify — How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things" (Bibliomotion, April 2014), Brian Burke, research vice president at Gartner, explains how to design an experience that involves people on an emotional, rather than transactional, level and motivates them to achieve their goals.

Gartner defines gamification as the use of game mechanics and experience design to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.

"Organisations should use gamification to help their customers, employees and communities to reach their goals. Gamification is about motivating people to achieve their own goals, not the organisation's goals," said Mr. Burke. "The sweet spot for gamification is shared goals. If a business can identify the goals it shares with its audience or provide its audience with goals that are meaningful to them, then it can use gamification to motivate these players to meet those goals, and the company will achieve its business outcomes as a consequence."

Senior business and IT leaders need to understand gamification and fuse it into their digital business strategy, according to Mr. Burke.  IT leaders need to rethink how they can design solutions for engagement rather than just efficiency. A digital engagement strategy challenges business leaders to go beyond interactions; it challenges IT leaders to go beyond transactions. Rather, it requires the design and delivery of digital experiences.

Organisations that are more aggressively adopting gamification already have multiple gamified solutions in place that support different business areas, address different target audiences, and achieve a wide range of business objectives. The new book includes many examples of different approaches.

"It’s not new,” said Mr. Burke. “Game mechanics and design have been used to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals throughout recorded history. Gamification is about rethinking motivation in a world where we are more often connected digitally than physically. It is about building motivation into a digitally connected world. And we are just getting started on this journey. Gamification will continue to develop for many years to come."

The book, "Gamify — How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things" is published by Bibliomotion and available now. Additional information can be found at www.gartner.com/gamify. For other books by Gartner analysts, please visit www.gartner.com/books.

Mr. Burke will visit Australia in July to speak at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development and Integration Summit on 21-22 July. For more information on the event, please visit www.gartner.com/ap/aadi. Members of the media can register to attend by contact susan.moore@gartner.com

Additional information from the events will be shared on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Gartner_inc and using #GartnerAADI.

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is a valuable partner in more than 14,000 distinct organisations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, and has 6,100 associates, including more than 1,460 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.

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