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Gamification and innovation: a mutually beneficial union

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Gamification and innovation: a
mutually beneficial union
FULL PAPER

Summary: Gamification is a new but rapidly growing trend impacting a wide range of areas,
such as education, marketing and others and it could be considered an innovation in these
areas, though it is rarely seen in this light. On the other hand, gamification was predicted to
revolutionise the innovating process by now, but we do not see many examples of it
This is an exploratory paper that intends to open the discussion about the ways in which a new
area of gamification intertwines with innovation and supports different aspects of it. In
particular, it provides examples of gamification being an innovative aspect of innovation as a
result and suggests the ways in which gamification can be an innovative approach to the
innovating process.

Track: Innovation
Word count: 6373
 Gamification and Innovation

INTRODUCTION
In 2012 Gartner 1 predicted that by 2015 more than 50% of innovation processes will be
gamified. But this prediction seems to have been too ambitious (the major gamification
software developers have a base of only 800 clients all together (Herger, 2015)), possibly
because in order to change a process (e.g. gamify), one needs to define it first, and defining
the innovation process has been an ongoing struggle for both the researchers and the
companies. This paper will look at various definitions of innovation with extra focus on the
innovating process and explore the ways in which it can benefit from gamification.
The use of games for the purpose other than entertainment can be traced back to the ancient
times. In the book The Histories, Herodotus says that when famine struck Lydia in Asia
Minor, the king of Lydia ordered to engage in games instead of eating every other day in
order to stretch the stocks of food, and presumably this rule lasted for 18 years, during which
a lot of well-known games such as dice were created (Rawlinson et al., 1880; McGonigal,
2011). Later in 1902 Lizzie Magie created a game called The Landlord’s Game to illustrate
the disadvantages of the current land tenure system. However, this game had quite a different
effect. It was renamed as Monopoly and became one of the best-selling board games of all
times (Ferrara, 2013). And with time researcher started exploring the role of games in
education and learning (Malone, 1981; DeVries & Edwards, 1973; Gee, 2004).
In early 2000 some game designers started thinking about the ways in which the excitement
and joy of playing the games could be transferred to the real world (McGonigal, 2011). This
process was given different names, such as playful design (Ferrara, 2012) or gameful design
(McGonigal, 2011), but the term “gamification” was adopted by the majority of researchers
and practitioners, initially coined by Nick Pelling in 2002 (Pelling, 2011). Originally it was
described as a tool to improve user interface (with game elements) to make electronic
transactions more enjoyable, but later it was adopted in a wide range of areas. Some
companies used just a few game elements to improve their interface, for example LinkedIn
that integrated a progress bar with a feedback mechanism and increased the level of profile’s
completion by 20% (Gossen, 2013). Others built their business around it, for example the
educational platform for foreign languages DuoLingo that converted language levels and
grades into game levels and rewards in a form of badges and points. This paper will describe
some of the brightest examples in more details, analysing them through the prism of
innovation.
Gamification found its way to the corporate environment as well. For example, Spotify
replaced annual reviews with its employees with a gamified app, and voluntary participation
increased 90%, while Google introduced “Goobles” currency to be spent on one of the most
scarce resources in Google – the server time (Dale, 2014). This paper will focus on a more
specific corporate area of application – gamification of innovating process – and it will start
with a brief literature review of the field of innovation. Then it will continue by exploring the
variety of definitions of gamification and discussing the confusion around this term. And
finally it will suggest the ways in which gamification interacts with innovation, in which
gamification can be seen as an innovative attribute of the product or service or as an
innovative approach to the innovating process. The former can provide plenty of examples,
while the latter requires more research, and this paper will attempt to cover everything that
could be covered in the literature on this matter.

1
Gartner, Inc. is an international information technology and advisory company. Every year it publishes a Hype
Cycle report of emerging technologies that are worth paying extra attention to, assessing their maturity level and
projecting when each of them reaches its full potential (source: www.gartner.com).

1
 Gamification and Innovation

Gamification is a relatively new field and even though it has already caused a certain level of
confusion and disagreement among both the researchers and practitioners, relatively little
research can be found in the academic literature on this topic, therefore it will be
complemented with material outside the academic research, as by now this is the source of
the most interesting examples of gamification.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Innovation
Innovation is viewed in the literature from two perspectives: as an output and as a process
(Crossan & Apaydin, 2010). Both perspectives take a retrospective approach, and whilst the
former attempts to understand the characteristics of the examples of innovation that we know,
in order to help identify future innovation, the latter is concerned more with the process of
defining a problem and finding a solution (output) (Lam, 2005; Swan & Scarbrough, 2001) as
well as implementing it further (Van de Ven, 1986). In order to analyse the impact
gamification can have on innovation, we need to review each of them in more details.
Innovation as an output could be viewed in relation to technology, such as being incremental
or radical (O’Reilly & Tushman, 1996), sustaining or disruptive (Christensen, 1997), or in
relation to the organisation, such as product/service (external to the organisation), process
(internal within the organisation), or business model (the organisation itself), originally
defined by Schumperter (Swan et al., 1999). It could also be defined by the degree of novelty
and seen as an early adoption or development of an idea (Utterback, 1974), or adoption of an
idea that is new to the company (Daft, 1982). The researcher have long been trying to
establish a link between the organisational architecture and innovativeness of the company
(or the capacity to produce innovative results) (Tidd et al., 2005; Mintzberg, 1980; Miles et
al., 1978), and this approach was later called a structuralist approach (Swan et al., 1999).
Though this perspective sheds light on the nature of innovation and its potential impact on the
organisation and its external environment, it does not advise on how to improve the level of
innovativeness of the company. In order to approach this question, we need to look at
innovation as a process, because by looking at it as a process, one creates a mental model,
that will shape their actions, consequently one needs to have a clear understanding of what
the process involves and how it operates (Tidd et al., 2005).
The research on innovation process evolved in two main streams: the supporters of it being a
stage-wise model (invention – development – testing – commercialisation) (Rogers, 2010)
and the advocates of randomness of the process (Van de Ven et al., 1999; Burgelman, 1983).
The latter compared it to a journey, while the former originally saw it as a linear model with
demand pull or technology push at its starting point, which Rothwell (1992) later
characterised as the first and the second of five generations of innovation models. The
following generations constitute the combination of the first two with feedback loops in-
between, the integration model involving the suppliers and the customers, and the system
integration model, heavily reliant on the networks. Though the models grew in complexity,
partially enabled by advancements in the information technology, the basic process
framework remained the same (Tidd et al., 2005).
A number of researchers criticised the linear approach for being too simplistic and noted that
innovation process is always accompanied by a degree of uncertainty. Instead they saw
innovation as a random process with sources of innovation coming exclusively from the

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 Gamification and Innovation

outside (Tushman & Anderson, 1986; Hannan & Freeman, 1993). According to this approach
innovation is only a matter of chance, therefore little can be managed and the only way to
increase innovation capabilities it to be exposed more to the external random events. Though
supported with convincing examples, this approach does not explain the continuous success
of companies with long history of successful innovation, such as Procter & Gamble, Siemens
and Rolls-Royce (Tidd et al., 2005). These living examples prove that the innovation process
can be formalised and managed to a certain extent.
Other researchers agreed that the innovation process is never linear, and therefore it should
not be strictly formalised, but instead they saw it as a journey and observed common patterns,
such as initiation, developments and implementation or termination (Van de Ven et al., 1999;
Van de Ven et al., 2000) or search, select, implement, and capture (Tidd et al., 2005). The
models look similar, but have different purposes. The model of Van de Ven et al. (1999)
attempts to capture what happens in the real environment and what characteristics each stage
has, reflecting its fuzziness and uncertainty, and therefore inability to control everything. In
particular, the initiation phase consists of gestation or long-lasting change that prepares the
ground (quite often associated with technology push or demand pull), the shocking event that
triggers the initiation of the project, and the development of the plan that formalises the
project. The phases of the development stage are open to interpretations, but have common
characteristics, such as the shift in performance criteria or a set-back to make adjustments.
The model of Tidd et al. (2005) on the contrary should be treated as frameworks for thinking,
rather than a description of a physical process, therefore is can be complemented with other
innovation routines that are not necessarily part of the innovation process and do not occur in
every company. And due to its flexibility it was widely adopted both in the literature and in
practice.

Figure 1. Innovating process. Source: (Tidd et al., 2005).

Another stream of researchers tried to combine structuralist and process approach and view
innovation as both the process and the output (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010), and some of them,
though viewed as supporters of the process approach, demonstrated the interdependence of
the two. In particular, Garud and Karnøe (2003) demonstrated that, by pursuing incremental
improvements in the wind turbine technologies, Danish companies became the world leaders
in wind energy innovation, in contrast with the US companies that spent large resources, but
did not achieve a breakthrough.

3
 Gamification and Innovation

The last approach as well as the previous one have been criticised for being based on
retrospective reasoning and not being able to answer the question of designing and predicting
the outcomes of the future innovation, as the opposite outcome could have been equally
possible. And one could ask the question, whether developing such a framework is possible
in principle, because the reliability of the research is always based on the quality of the data
from the past, but innovation as a phenomenon is concerned with the novelty in the future.
Gamification could be a partial answer to that, but the examples, provided in this paper, will
be based on the past experience as well.

Gamification
Originally Nick Pelling (2011) described gamification as a process of changing interface to
make electronic transactions more fun and game-like, but later it was expanded with the
emphasis on using game elements (Zicherman & Cunningham, 2011; Deterding et al., 2011;
Burke, 2012; Werbach & Hunter, 2012) in a non-gaming environment (Deterding et al.,
2011; Werbach & Hunter, 2012; Burke, 2012) to improve user engagement and experience
(Zicherman & Cunningham, 2011; Burke, 2012; Huotari & Hamari, 2012). And nowadays
we can find examples of gamification being used offline as well (e.g. The Speed Camera
Lottery in Stockholm (Volkswagen, 2010).
Table 1. Definitions of Gamification.

(Pelling, 2011, p.1) ‘Applying game-like accelerated user interface design to make
electronic transactions both enjoyable and fast.’
(Zicherman & ‘The process of using game-thinking and mechanics to engage
Cunningham, 2011, users.’
p.xiv)
(Deterding et al., ‘The use of game design elements in non-game contexts.’
2011, p.1)
(Burke, 2012, p.1) ‘The use of game mechanics and game design techniques in non-
game contexts to design behaviours, develop skills or to engage
people in innovation.’
(Werbach & Hunter, ‘The use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-
2012, p.26) game contexts.’
(Huotari & Hamari, ‘A process of enhancing a service with affordances for gameful
2012, p.19) experiences in order to support user's overall value creation.’
(Werbach, 2014, ‘The process of making activities more game-like.’
p.266)

When the researchers mention game elements, they usually refer to such components as
points, badges, rating, leaderboards, progress bars, etc. And while the term was coined in
2002, the examples of the use of these elements could be found much earlier. The army uses
ranks and medals (badges) to demonstrate the career progress and status. The schools and
universities use grades to rate the quality of work and progress, and diplomas (badges) to
certify their graduates and reward them with a certain status. And it is rather likely that many
of game elements found their way to the games from the non-gaming environment and
carried the same purpose with them, and now we observe the reverse process with a new
touch – the elements are not perceived so seriously and are associated with fun and
enjoyment.

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 Gamification and Innovation

And with the variety of these elements comes confusion. Is everything that is remotely
related to games an example of gamification? Or should it be restricted to a much narrower
range of applications? Deterding et al. (2011) drew a parallel with Caillois’ (1961) concept of
paidia and ludus or “playing” and “gaming”, where playing refers to a broader category
incorporating improvisational and expressive behaviours and meanings, while gaming refers
to the playful systems bound with the explicit rules and driven by the goals. By adding the
second dimension – parts/whole – they divided game/play area into four categories (Figure
2).

Gaming

Serious
Gamification
Games

Whole Parts

Playful
Toys
Design

Playing

Figure 2. Classification of game/play area. Source: (Deterding et al., 2011).

And this classification makes a clear distinction between the gamification and serious games
(e.g. business simulators or educational games), but even they are commonly mistaken for
gamification (Salcu & Acatrinei, 2013; Halan et al., 2010). The distinction between
gamification and playful design is less obvious. For example, a Speed Lottery system that
was introduced in Stockholm tracks the speed of the drivers and gives a part of the speed
fines back to some of the obedient drivers via a lottery (Volkswagen, 2010). This system has
a set of rules, but does it have goals? It does for the system designers and maybe for some of
the drivers, who are keen on winning the lottery, but for the majority of the drivers it does
not. Therefore according to Deterding et al. (2011) it will not be classified as gamification,
because it does not have clear goals for all the participants, but for Werbach and Hunter
(2012) it will, because it uses game elements, initiates behavioural change and generates
enjoyable experience. And the main question would be: is it important to make a distinction
between the two?
Another source of confusion comes from the attempts to classify game elements. Most of the
scholars classify the game elements by their level of abstraction, but there is a disagreement

5
 Gamification and Innovation

in the levels (varying from two to five) as well as in the terminology in the literature (Table
2). The authors of the two most widely cited books, Zicherman & Cunningham (2011) and
Werbach & Hunter (2012), define three levels, but in a different way. For example, what the
former call mechanics (e.g. points and badges), the latter name components. Zicherman and
Cunningham refer to MDA (mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics) framework of game design
(Hunicke et al., 2004), which is cited by a number of other scholars, but they do not elaborate
on the third aspect of it as well as misinterpret the meaning of the first two levels the original
authors assigned to them. In particular, Hunicke et al. (2004) refer to mechanics as actions
and control mechanisms, not simple interface elements, while dynamics was the underlying
behaviour for them. On the other hand, Werbach and Hunter (2012) share the understanding
of Hunicke et al., but instead of adopting and adapting it to the gamification needs, they
concentrate on the components that comprise the interface and are visible to us, and leave the
aesthetics aside.
Deterding et al. (2011) define five levels, but their understanding is quite different from the
previously discussed classifications. Some of the examples provided by the authors are
included in different levels by other authors, and the explanation of these examples is not
sufficient to understand the logic of the authors behind this classification. For example,
challenges that are presented as a game model are included in game mechanics by Werbach
and Hunter (2012), and the whole MDA framework is included in the game models. Apart
from that, some levels seem to stand above and be applicable to all the games. They include
game principles and game design methods and are essential to take into account, but do not
refer to a specific game.
Other researchers distinguish between two levels of the game elements: game mechanics and
game dynamics (Blohm & Leimeister, 2013; Pedreira et al., 2015), and their definitions
supported by examples partially overlap with all three levels listed at the beginning, as well
as misinterpret the original meaning of each level of Hunicke et al. (2004).
Table 2. Classifications of gamification elements.

Source Game elements Examples

(Zicherman & Mechanics points, levels, progression bar, leaderboards, badges
Cunningham,
2011)
Dynamics pattern recognition, collecting, surprise, creating order, gifting,
flirtation, recognition for achievements, leading others, fame,
heroism, gaining status, growing
Aesthetics sensation, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery,
expression, submission (Hunicke et al., 2004)
(Werbach & Components achievements, avatar, badges, boss fights, collections, social
Hunter, 2012) graph, virtual goods, combat, content unlocking, gifting,
leaderboards, levels, points, quests, teams
Mechanics challenges, chance, competition, cooperation, feedback,
resource acquisition, rewards, transactions, turns, win states
Dynamics constrains, emotions, narratives, progression, relationship
(Deterding, Interface design e.g. badge, leaderboard, level
2012) patterns
Design patterns e.g. time constraint, limited resources, turns
and mechanics
Design e.g. enduring play, clear goals, variety of game styles
principles and
heuristics

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 Gamification and Innovation

Game models e.g. MDA, challenge, fantasy, curiosity, game design atoms,
CEGE
Game design e.g. playtesting, play-centric design, value conscious game
methods design
(Blohm & Mechanics documentation of behaviour, scoring systems, badges, trophies,
Leimeister, rankings, ranks, levels, reputation points, group tasks, time
2013) pressure, tasks, quests, avatars, virtual worlds, virtual trade
Dynamics exploration, collection, competition, acquisition of status,
collaboration, challenge, development / organization, motives

All the authors mentioned such elements as points, badges and leaderboards, giving them
different names, and these elements constitute the basic building blocks, the objects, that
users will see and will be interacting with. Logically the next level should link different
building blocks with each other and describe various actions that can be performed with
them. And finally the top level binds the elements of the previous levels together. Of all the
classifications, the one suggested by Werbach and Hunter (2012) correspond the most to this
logic, namely: components, mechanics and dynamics. Table 2 illustrates a wide variety of
game elements, but due to the limits of this paper it is not possible to concentrate on them in
more details as the main focus of this paper is to explore the variety of ways in which
gamification contributes to innovation.

GAMIFICATION AND INNOVATION

Similarly to the approach to innovation the relationship between gamification and innovation
is two-fold: gamification is regarded as an innovative approach in certain areas, for example,
education (Baker et al., 2012) and the innovative component of gamification is added to a
product in this stream of research. On the other hand, gamification is believed to improve
innovation as a process (Roth et al., 2015) and could be seen as an process innovation of an
innovating process.
If we look at the structuralist type of gamification-innovation interaction, we could view it
along the dimensions of innovation. The decision to classify an innovation as being
incremental or radical, or sustaining or disruptive is judgemental and arbitrary, and is based
on the past experience. Gamification is a relatively young phenomenon, therefore providing
examples that can be definitely classified as disruptive or radical might be too early. One
could make assumptions, but the time will show whether the impact was truly large, and
among them are some of the crowdsourcing platforms.
Nick Pelling (2015) revisited his original definition of gamification and suggested that its
purpose is a call for social action. Though this definition leaves outside a large number of
examples of gamified products/systems for individuals, such as Nike+ or Duolingo, it sheds
light on some examples, such as Alibaba and KickStarter that changed quite radically the
landscape of the markets they are operating in. The success and driving power could not be
fully attributed to gamification, but its contribution is noticeable.
Identifying product – process – business model innovation is much easier and we can observe
a lot of successful examples along this dimension. And one could argue that this separation is
not needed, because very often different types of ideas reinforce each other (Damanpour &
Evan, 1984; Rothwell, 1992) and sometimes they are not possible without each other (Ruttan
& Hayami, 1984). E.g. gamification in education could be seen as service innovation, but

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 Gamification and Innovation

gamifying educational process requires changing the underlying processes of the ways the
service is provided, in particular, creating an infrastructure, changing the evaluation matrix
and giving more power of choice to the students, which demonstrates that one is not possible
without the other.
One prominent example that illustrates these relations and provides multiple examples of
innovation is DuoLingo. This example has already been mentioned before, but it is worth
reviewing it in more details. DuoLingo is a web-based service for learning foreign languages
that promises to bring some fun and enjoyment with the process of studying apart from
teaching one a foreign language. Conventional electronic-based self-learning services provide
contents in blocks of exercises with the mechanism of simultaneous auto-marking, and
developers either sell the contents in full or provide the basics for free and charge for
unlocking advanced contents. But the developers of DuoLingo, apart from building a friendly
and pleasant interface, embedded game elements into it. A user collects coins to track the
progress and receives badges as an acknowledgement of completion of the next language
level, all of which are graphically displayed on a tree. One can have as many attempts as
needed to finish the exercise, and after achieving a certain level, a learner can try herself on a
piece of real text, and this constitutes the second curious aspect of DuoLingo. The service is
entirely free and instead the company is paid for the translation of the documents that it
crowdsources to its learners through an algorithm that combines several translated versions
together and that proved to be as accurate as that of the professional translators. This example
illustrates at least two types of innovation – service innovation in a form of teaching process
and business model innovation that accompanies it.
Education is probably one of the most interesting sectors to search for examples of
gamification. It is being adopted relatively slowly, but the impact is truly significant. Schools
and universities have long been using elements that are now associated with games, such as
grades (points) and honours degrees (badges), but gamification changes their perception.
With the early experiments school work was broken down in different aspects, such as
reading extra materials, completing home work on time, or asking the most interesting
questions, and each of these activities could be rewarded now, meaning that more than one
person can be the best in different things and that they have a choice. Earning points also
changes the perception of grades: the students earn them for doing things right, rather than
lose them for making mistakes (Sheldon, 2011), and they feel more equal treatment in an
environment where everyone can be heard (LeBlanc, 2004). Not only that, but students can
be involved in rewarding as well, evaluating each other, and a teacher is not the only
empowered person at school anymore (Lee & Hammer, 2011). Such experiments showed
improvements in the students’ performance (LeBlanc, 2004; Laster, 2010).
One school – Quest to Learn – went further and fully gamified its teaching processes: instead
of being graded the pupils are upgraded, instead of completing assignments they acquire
super powers and complete secret missions (McGonigal, 2011). Assessing the results and
spreading such experiments at a full scale becomes difficult due to a large time span that is
required to observe the results. But higher engagement from the pupils can already be
observed.
Marketing is another area of application with the companies ranging from trying to involve
their users into the co-creation process to involving the users into more conscious use of their
product, like Nike+ that created a gamified running app to track the progress and interact with
other users (Zuckerman & Gal-Oz, 2014). Among others Nike implemented animated
avatars, which change their outlook depending on the progress a runner makes, such as being
sad and tired after a long break, or bouncing off the walls after a few good runs (McGonigal,

8
 Gamification and Innovation

2011), therefore being a motivator and a simultaneous feedback and transforming the
perception of the company from selling the shoes to supporting a lifestyle.
When looking at the examples of gamification, one could find mainly examples of
product/service and business model innovation. The process innovation takes place inside the
company and we do not observe many examples of this type of gamified process yet.
However early examples can already be found. The rest of this section will provide an
overview of all the examples of gamifying innovating process, being a process innovation of
innovating process, that were found in the literature.
Innovating process is often compared to being fuzzy and highly unstructured; its flow
depends on the nature of innovation and the company as well as on external events. And
numerous attempts to conceptualise this process, as we saw them in the literature review,
have not provided a perfect solution, though they demonstrate that the process is neither
entirely random, nor perfectly structured (Garud et al., 2013). In an attempt to structure this
process to a certain extent, the companies refer to the product development process that will
be part of the development of an innovative product after a certain point. Similarly, in order
to investigate the ways in which this process can benefit from the gamification, it needs to be
formalised to a certain extent, because firstly, to understand how something can be gamified,
it needs to be determined, and secondly, we can discuss what can be gamified only if we have
control over it, therefore it is not sensible to focus on the external environment and shock
events, which we have no influence on. By doing so we do not imply that the innovation is a
strictly regulated sequential process, we rather suggest what phases are likely to take place
and what role gamification can play in them. Therefore it seems more logical to apply the
model of Tidd et al. (2005) with the main focus on the first two phases, as the development of
an innovative product is more uncertain the earlier it is in the development phase, and this is
the place where innovating process could benefit the most from. By doing so we understand
that the output gets restricted to the product/service and possibly process type; but so were all
the models reviewed.
A search or ideation phase of the innovation has received most attention and has been
linked to the gamification of the crowdsourcing (Hofferbert et al., 2015; Solf et al., 2014;
Roth et al., 2015) and open innovation (Cherinka & Prezzama, 2013) communities with an
intention to increase their participation. But one should be careful with what is meant by
crowdsourcing. If the crowd is used to complete a routine work via a gamified environment,
such as the digitalisation of the Finnish National Library (Roth et al., 2015), it can hardly be
considered an example of a gamified ideation process. If the crowd is invited to generate
multiple ideas to solve a challenge, it is rather an open innovation. However, if multiple ideas
were a result of a group work, where new participants could improve and build on what was
previously suggested, this type of crowdsourcing could be considered an approach to an
ideation phase, but gamified example of such environment are yet to be seen.
Typically, the crowdsourcing and open innovation platforms are gamified with the use of
standard components, such as points, badges, social graphs and leaderboards, linked together
through rewarding mechanics, challenges and contests. Collaboration and competition are
often seen as two sides of the same coin and are two major dynamics that the games and
gamified systems are based on. Though many companies take competition on board as a way
to motivate their personnel and promote further engagement, the research suggests that a
larger proportion of people prefer cooperation or a combination of the two (El-Nasr et al.,
2010). And this pattern is even more distinct if we compare the gender preferences: women
are less driven by the competition and achievements than men, while on the other hand they

9
 Gamification and Innovation

are more attracted by the games that include an ability to socialise and collaborate (Hartmann
& Klimmt, 2006; Williams et al., 2009).
Competition has historically been used by the companies to spur innovative ideas among the
employees or attract them from the outside (Hutter et al., 2011). The development of WEB
2.0 tools boosted the spread of online communities, which in turn attracted the attention of
the researcher as a phenomenon of collaborative innovation, based on the principle of free
revealing of the ideas and sharing the knowledge (Hippel & Krogh, 2003). Further research
demonstrated that running a contest inside a collaborative environment can decrease
drastically the collaboration between the participants (Franke & Shah, 2003), but on the other
hand introducing a competitive element inside a community increases the overall innovative
activities (Füller et al., 2007), and the participants that are getting involved in both types of
behaviour achieve better results innovation-wise (Hutter et al., 2011). Therefore it is
important to note that gamification can reinforce each of them, as well as combine the two.
The next phase – the selection – could be potentially gamified through the classical
mechanics of rating the ideas (Leimeister et al., 2009) either by peers of by experts. However,
it is not the only mechanics that could be used at this stage. Petersen and Ryu (2015)
suggested using betting to predict the most promising ideas during the contest, and showed
that although all three best ideas of concept design could not have been identified until the
very last betting round, two of them could be predicted relatively early, as well as the worst
ideas. Though they conducted the research on students, they opened an area for further
experimentation and research involving practitioners. Their previously described element of
mechanics – betting – could be potentially more efficient than simple rating, because it
reduces the effect of “nepotism” in the local networks, as well as it can help identify potential
experts, who are capable of predicting the winners accurately. Apart from that, though this
mechanics could facilitate an interesting dynamics in the system, a system designer should be
aware of its highly competitive nature, which might trigger a potentially undesirable
behaviour, if collaboration is a priority for an organisation. Limiting the bet size can
potentially mitigate this risk.
A principally new way of funding projects is offered by platforms such as Kickstarter and
Indigogo, and some practitioners consider them not obvious, but excellent examples of
gamifying a social action network (Pelling, 2015). This approach has not been explored in the
literature yet, but could be worth testing in a corporate environment with decentralised
decision making and employees empowered with higher level of responsibility. It could be
realised through the departments and divisions allocating parts of their budgets to the projects
that could be of interest to them, as well as through employees committing their time to
interesting projects.
The next phase – the implementation – refers to the actual development and implementation
of the innovation, and especially if it involves product development. A number of
frameworks have been developed to structure the product development process (Pugh, 1991;
Peters et al., 1999; Boothroyd et al., 1994) with the most widely adopted and detailed being
that of Ulrich and Eppinger (2000). The phases of this process (Figure 3) can be linear as well
as parallel, cyclic or concurrent depending on the product specifics. This paper does not
intend to review each of these stages in relation to gamification, as a number of methods have
already been developed and are successfully applied in the later phases of this process, such
as Quality Function Deployment (Akao, 1990), Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (Stamatis,
2003) and Design For Manufacture and Assembly Methods (Boothroyd et al., 1994) (Ulrich
& Eppinger, 2000). Instead, the rest of this section will focus on the concept development
phase as the earliest and the most uncertain one, therefore in need of more support. And then

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it will briefly comment on the testing phase, supported with one example that was found in
the literature.

Figure 3. Product Development Process. Source: (Ulrich & Eppinger, 2000).

The concept development phase resembles the search and selection phase to a certain extent,
as well as it echoes the following stages, such as detailed design and testing; it includes a set
of activities, such as identifying and collecting the customer needs and translating them to the
initial product requirements, exploring design concepts and investigating their feasibility,
building and testing experimental prototypes. The emphasis can be put on one activity or
another depending on the nature of the product. This part will review the possibilities to
support each of these activities with gamification.
Collecting the technical requirements could be one aspect that distinguishes it from the
previous stages, as at this phase the product becomes more detailed and specific from the
technical point of view, and it was gamified in an interesting way in the application iThink
(Fernandes et al., 2012). The participants were asked to share new requirements as well as to
comment on the ones that have already been shared and were rewarded with points for each
new idea or comment, and in order to regulate the nature of comments, the designers
embedded the technique of “The Six Thinking Hats” (De Bono, 1989), whereby the
commenters had to choose which perspective they were taking, when submitting a comment.
This technique allows to regulate the flow and the quality of the comments as well as indicate
that the comments of different types are appreciated.
Once the initial requirements are better specified, gamification can step in in several ways.
Exploring design concepts could be organised in a form of a contest in a similar way the
search or ideation phase could be gamified. Among other possibilities a group of researchers
suggested to turn this phase in a quest, each level of which is an activity that the designers
need to complete, starting with generating multiple concepts and forming the teams among
the most promising ones, and continuing with development and preliminary prototyping
(Ionica & Leba, 2015). Though this quest was another form of a contest, it could be
implemented for one team only as well, but so far it was only tested on master’s students and
there is no recorded practice that would demonstrate the viability of this kind of gamified
system in a real company. Among other characteristics of this experiment, which could be
considered a drawback, is its rigid and very detailed process that could be helpful in the later
phases of the system-level design and detailed design, as they require more specific actions,
but might limit creativity at this phase, where it plays a vital role.
Though the more defined the project is the less room it leaves to creativity and seemingly to
fewer opportunities for gamifying the process, there are examples worth looking at. The
testing phase can be harder and more time-consuming for the software developers and
Microsoft approached this process by launching a contest between the divisions on the
number of bugs each of them managed to find in a new version of Windows, the only prize
being the pride and prestige of one’s division, but it generated a viral effect and the
developers engaged in a fierce competition to beat their colleagues (Werbach & Hunter,
2012).

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The last phase of Tidd’s et al. (2005) model refers to capturing the benefits of a newly
developed innovation, and if gamification were to play a role in this phase, it would more
likely be used as an innovative component of a product as a package, for instance, as an
innovative approach to marketing. With regards to the intra-organisational application, it
could only be used to support knowledge management activities of the knowledge workers
that are responsible for this area of innovation implementation, but this area stays outside the
scope of this paper.
The area of gamification is relatively new and its range of applications in the organisation,
and its innovation development process in particular, has not been fully explored yet. We see
that the predictions of Gartner, that at least 50% of the innovative processes will be gamified
by 2015, were too optimistic, but early examples can already be found, and more research
and experimenting is needed to contribute to this area of innovation research.

CONCLUSIONS
This paper provided a brief overview of the field of gamification and discussed the ways in
which it intertwines with innovation. Gamification can support innovation in multiple ways,
such as being an innovative part of innovation as an output, and this paper provided examples
of innovation in education and marketing through gamification. But it could also support the
innovating process, and the third section of this paper collected examples of gamified
activities on various stages of innovating process.
If we look at the innovative activities of a company as a whole, innovation often involves
change in the organisation (Burnes, 2005), and gamification could serve as a perfect
environment for initiating an organisation change. For example, a former VP of customer
experience in Yahoo! used gamification to implement change by making slight changes in the
system, and he claimed that it accelerated the speed of change several times (Rimon, 2015).
But this topic was left outside the main scope of this paper.
Innovating process and innovation approach of an organisation are often reviewed along the
dimensions of exploration versus exploitation (March, 1991), and are also linked to the
convergent and divergent thinking (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2009; Smith & Tushman L.,
2005), both of which could be supported with gamification as well. In particular, the research
on the students of the executive program in Warwick University by Betts et al. (2013)
demonstrated that apart from achieving better results in the final examination, the students
who used the gamified system voluntarily managed to achieve the highest level of critical
thinking in their comments against the cognitive presence framework (Garrison et al., 2001)
compared to those who were obliged to use it.
Divergent thinking follows the path of trial and error and is associated with experimenting.
And of course, the importance of experimenting and trying on the early stage of innovation is
difficult to overestimate. Experiments as another way of creating new ideas and new
knowledge (Fahay & Prusak, 1998; Leonard-Barton, 1995) go alongside trial-and-error and
are a way of thinking and an important way of learning, and a primary way for children in
particular. Gamified systems create an environment that is safe for trial and error, that
encourages experimenting and tolerates mistakes (Cohen, 2011), and multiple instant
feedback mechanisms allow to accelerate this process.
One could find other ways to connect gamification and innovation apart from what was listed
above, and these are areas that need further research to contribute to this aspect of innovation.

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LIMITATIONS
This paper presents an early exploratory study that suggests the ways in which gamification
interacts with innovation, but it is based entirely on secondary data. It opens a topic for
further discussion and conceptualisation of the roles of gamification in the innovation. And
then further empirical studies need to be done in order to test the ideas and provide definite
solutions to the gamification being implemented in the corporate environment. Apart from
that, due to the field of gamification being relatively new, further research could also open
new ways in which organisations could benefit from gamification.

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