Exploring the Use of Prediction Markets as Digital Games to Support Learning in a Project Management Context

Abstract

A growing area of study is the management of complex projects involving stakeholders dispersed across organizations. Key to the success of complex projects is encouraging stakeholders to learn and communicate useful information about work progress and potential risks. Increasingly, companies are using a gaming approach to encourage workers to learn and communication useful information. This chapter looks at one such gaming vehicle, namely prediction markets. Prediction markets are games in the form of marketplaces that adapt many of the same structures found in stock markets to aggregate information about the probability of future events. This chapter traces the developmental history and application of prediction markets, discusses issues in marketplace design, and explores how game-based learning principles can support the use of prediction markets in this context. The concluding section discusses the application of a prediction market to support the management of an IT project.