Welcome to the latest in a series of brief interviews with guest experts from KnowledgeBrief’s Innovation Programme, providing a window into the experts’ latest ideas and new advice for executives.
Following the Innovation Day in April, Dr Agnessa Spanellis (AS), Assistant Professor at Heriot-Watt University, gave us an interview to discuss her latest insights on how gamification can be used to improve organisational performance.
KB: What’s the key business challenge that organisations need to address, that your research tackles?
AS: My research investigates how gamification can help enable knowledge flow across an organisation and improve their innovative performance. When I investigated barriers to knowledge and innovation management, the key challenges I observed included:
- Lack of time to spend on knowledge sharing or innovation activities. These activities are often seen as additional to main job responsibilities, and therefore are deprioritised. This was probably the most frequently quoted problem.
- Lack of opportunities to share knowledge systematically or with a wider network, employees working in silos. This is particularly challenging in geographically distributed organisations and has moved to the forefront of the agenda since most organisations have become distributed due to the lockdown.
KB: What advice would you give to executives, based on your findings?
AS: In my research on gamification, I found that gamification creates the need and provides opportunities for social learning among colleagues. This often happens as a side effect in the initiatives that aim at improving a specific key performance indicator. Therefore, my advice would be to identify a specific, measurable performance area and engage employees in a game to improve it. For instance, if the company wants to improve sales, it can start a sailing competition, where the sales per period of time are converted into the speed and mileage covered by imaginary ships. If it is a team competition, the members will start collaborating and sharing their experience within teams.
However, I would advise not to try to turn everything into a competition. Collaboration or a combination of the two can be much more powerful.
KB: How does your latest research approach this? What do the results indicate?
AS: My latest research looks at how gamification affects social learning within organisations. The research showed that avatars are a particularly fascinating gamification element. When a company runs a themed competition, the participants can change their avatars to fit the theme. For instance, they can become pirates or crew members of a spaceship. Personal avatars liberate the participants and let try new communication styles, step out of how they are normally perceived in an organisation, and play with their new identity. The game allows experimentation. For the participants, the study showed that the new identities help them to identify commonalities with their colleagues, and thus to develop a community bond, which is an essential component for social learning.
The company can also give itself a new identity through a corporate avatar that interacts with individuals. The employees engage in conversations with the avatar and develop relationships with the fictional character. Hence, the corporate avatar achieves a form of personification. Through this playful behaviour, it was seen that the virtual mascot and the members of the community calibrate their values and expectations.
KB: What did you learn or take away from meeting with the executives at the KnowledgeBrief Innovation Day?
AS: One point that was raised and is very important, is the need to involve the participants in the process of co-creation of the organisational change. For instance, if the company wants to introduce a gamified initiative, the employees are much more likely to accept it if they have been involved in the development process and the resulting design includes their input. This empowers them and gives them a level of control.
With thanks to Dr Agnessa Spanellis, Assistant Professor at Heriot-Watt University.