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"Gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users in solving problems and increase users' self-contributions."[1] The following link gives a brief but a very good introduction to gamification - http://www.bunchball.com/gamification. The principles of game mechanics can be seen at work in very popular games such mobile/tab such as candy crush. The degree of involvement in the game is very high. Players often go on for hours and hours trying to improve their scores, reach more levels and so on. Most of the popular forums (stack overflow for example) now incorporate one or more principles of game mechanics. The participants score points for posting, liking, commenting, and answering questions. More the points you collect, higher your rank goes and more privileges you get. Imagine how effective a business would be if it can create a similar level of involvement for its customers or vendors. I experienced gamification first hand when the company I was working for decided to gamify its internal employee portal. Given that the company had grown to 5000+ employees, it was facing employee engagement challenges. A graphical interface was created where employees could create their 'avatars'. One scored points for good work, helping fellow employees with their problems, participating in HR activities etc. Special 'gifts' were awarded for getting technical certifications. The benefits of this program were multi-faceted. Increased collaboration - Employee collaboration shot-up as individuals were now eager to help others to score points. Problems were shared and quickly solved. Good ideas no longer remained in isolation, they quickly spread across the organization. Employee performance diary - Employees and managers could track employee performance via their avatar. Employees now took it upon themselves to record their good work (You got points for good work). This created an employee performance diary, the contents of which proved very helpful during the annual appraisal time. Smoothening of HR processes - The HR was able to transition from the annual appraisal process to a continuous process with hardly any reluctance from the employees. The performance diary formed the base for continuous appraisals. Productivity - Needless to say, as employees got more and more involved in company activities, employee productivity increased More and more processes were soon gamified, resulting in a comprehensive employee engagement platform. The program was so successful that the company offers the platform (called eMee) as a product! It has been a few years since I left the company. But I'm sure the gamification platform has been a big contributor towards the company being ranked among the top in various employee satisfaction surveys. In addition, the platform is now bringing in revenue for the company. References [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

Hey there guys! I am very delighted to find this great website (thank you Tom!) and happy to see good discussion from the members. I'm a recent grad with a Bach Business degree (economics major) and only a month ago I have decided to jump start my career via management consulting. I am the type of person who has a wide range of interest and find it difficult to settle on an area, this would probably explain my 'late bloomer' situation. As Business was a plan b for me I didn't graduate with a good gpa and without a precise career direction, I missed out on alot of intern/work experience opportunities during my uni years. Fast forward to now, I've narrowed down on what I'm looking for in terms of career aspirations and decided to start/commit with mc. I have my Marc Cosentino, Victor Cheng, several big 3 interview practise cases and Sheryl Sandberg to keep me motivated. With the crappy gpa and utter lack of background, I've decided to widen my scope into boutique/smaller consulting firms. However as 95% of the grad career opportunities & entry roles are currently closed, I've taken some time out of application, into networking (mostly virtual as there aren't much mc related public seminars in Melbourne and most of my peers are economists or finance/bankers) and reading up case studies. But one of the biggest problem is I don't have sufficient relevant work experience to show hiring companies. What would you reckon to be a good way to gain entry into the field given my situation? Am I on the right track? Is there anything I might have missed? What's a good way to find a mentor in this field without having a strong network? Thanks in advance for your time : ) - Rebecca ps. I'm keen on buddying up to practise interview cases via skype or in person (if you're in my area that is)!