Welcome, Matt Shore

[This is a re-post from our new blog. To keep up-to-date, please follow us there.]

We are pleased to welcome the newest member of the Crowdcast team — Matt Shore, Director of Product. Previously, he was part of the founding team at Interlace Systems, an upstart in the Integrated Business Planning space. Matt played key roles in product and market definition, IP and product development, early customer acquisition, venture financing, and successful exit via sale to Oracle in 2007. Prior to Interlace, Matt held development and development management positions at Business Intelligence pioneer Arbor Software/Hyperion Solutions and Oracle. Matt received an MBA from Insead and BA in Music and BS in Computer Science from the Florida State University.

We are excited and honored to have Matt aboard.

New Name, New Blog

We have created a new blog for Crowdcast, which can be found at: blog.crowdcast.com. Please join us over there.

Thanks!

The Economist and the Promise of PM

This past week, The Economist wrote on the yet-unfulfilled promise of prediction markets. At Crowdcast , we believe prediction markets are not yet mainstream because the current solutions rely on mechanisms designed for the stock market, not for the enterprise.

The stock trading metaphor works for a large, liquid stock market, but is unsuitable for enterprise forecasting. The concept of shorting and covered calls is far from intuitive for your average employee, and the stock mechanism makes it hard to ask the simplest of questions relevant for corporate forecasters. For example, buying or selling a collection of virtual stocks representing probabilities of sales falling in particular ranges is an incredibly obtuse way of asking for a single sales forecast. Finally, the stock mechanism relies on copious liquidity to ensure meaningful metrics, which is often not available with the limited crowds available in the enterprise.

However, innovation moves on and we question the assumption that prediction markets have to rely on the stock market analogy. At Crowdcast, we have been working on a new mechanism, that takes into account participant behavior and aptitude as much as market efficiency. The product we are launching in April will deliver easy, engaging, and expressive information exchanges, without the limitations of traditional notions of stock markets.

When you get the questions, incentives, and mechanism right, a prediction market can be an incredibly powerful management tool. Employees share insights anonymously and are measured and rewarded for their intelligence. Widely deployed, this has the potential to fundamentally change the nature of the organizational contract, moving from information flow based on hierarchy and silos, to enterprise-wide direct communication.

A whole new take on prediction markets; available from Crowdcast in April 2009.

Prediction Market Conference Season

We have two prediction market conferences / speaking opportunities coming up.

On January 22, from 6:30-8:30 PM, I (Mat) will be speaking at the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum at the Haas School of Business. The title of the talk is "Prediction Markets: Entrepreneurial Opportunities in Fortune Telling"

I'll be with Kay-Yut Chen of HP and Kirill Makharinsky of Younoodle

It will be interesting to hear the latest from HP and also to learn more about Younoodles methods of forecasting start up success (I don't think it uses prediction markets..)


The following day, Leslie will be speaking at the San Francisco Prediction Markets Cluster

Are Collective Intelligence Solutions being Oversold?

A reply to Chris Masse on Midas Oracle


Chris,

Management struggles to understand and plan for the future. When forecasts are inaccurate, corporations incur huge costs due to inventory write-offs, stock-outs, misallocated resources or cost of capital. Collective intelligence delivers objective, accurate forecasts in real time, thus saving many millions of dollars for our corporate clients. The solution is not being oversold, to the contrary, the potential vastly exceeds current awareness and adoption.

"If foresight is not the whole part of management, at least it is an essential part of it" (Henri Fayol, 1916).

In my 10 years experience as a management accountant and corporate planner, I have witnessed multiple forecasts suffer from inaccuracy due to uncertainty and biases. Whether forecasting a launch date, sales volume or cost of development, it is the systematic biases due to incentive systems, politics and common cognitive errors that contribute more to inaccuracy than the uncertainty. The problem stems from the fact that the owner of a forecast is normally the owner of the business unit / sales team / project, and budgets and bonuses are based on forecasts. This necessitates game playing and politics and makes the development of an objective, accurate forecast near impossible.

Collective intelligence can overcome these problems by incentivising a diverse crowd of knowledgeable employees to share their insight, balancing the resulting estimates, and rewarding accuracy and timeliness.

However, we are at an early stage in the development of this opportunity. There is still work ahead of us to develop the ideal mechanism to combine simplicy of UI with richness of information gathering. In addition, we need to further develop the way collective intelligence interfaces with traditional corporate structures, processes and systems. These are Xpree's challenges......stay tuned.

Mat
CEO, Xpree

Blog of note - Anything Worth Doing

While searching for some design principles for databases, I came across two articles by Thomas Gagne, CTO of InStream Services. The articles are Database Prenuptials and Production rules as easy as 1, 2, 3--but without 2 and 3.

In terms of good, sound advice given with little expectation of return, I rather enjoyed both articles, as they give an insight into what should be important for the technology side of an emerging (or even established) company. Looks like I have some more reading to do!

Andrew McAfee - E2.0 Guru - Joins Xpree Advisory Board

Reknowned Enterprise 2.0 thought leader, Dr Andrew McAfee has joined Xpree's Board of Advisors.

Andrew is an Associate Professor at Harvard Business School. He joined the faculty of the Technology and Operations Management Unit at HBS in 1998. His research investigates how managers can most effectively select, implement, and use Information Technology (IT) to achieve business goals. He was the recipient of a US Department of Energy Integrated Manufacturing Fellowship for his doctoral research, which focused on the performance impact of enterprise information technologies such as SAP's R/3.

His current research falls into two categories. The first is an exploration of how Web 2.0 technologies can be used within the enterprise, and what their impact is likely to be. The second is a study of IT's impact over time on the structure of US industries and the nature of competition within them.

He launched the first HBS faculty blog, which examines the impact of IT on businesses and their leaders.

He was awarded a Doctorate in Business Administration at HBS in 1999. He also holds dual MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Management from MIT as a Leaders for Manufacturing fellow, and BS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and in Humanities from MIT.

Welcome Andrew!