Description
Thompson, an economist and retired professor of marketing at York U. in Toronto, explains how companies use prediction markets to make better decisions. He describes what they are and provides better-known examples of how markets work, such as sports and movie markets, elections, and estimation markets, and how they can replace meetings, polls and surveys, and reliance on experts. He shows how Google, Best Buy, Misys Banking Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Toyota, and other companies use prediction markets, and creative applications like in musical casting, healthcare, fighting terrorism, government decisions, and long-term markets, as well as how to make them work. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Why Prediction Markets Are Good for BusinessFrom selecting the lead actress in a Broadway musical, to predicting a crucial delay in the delivery of Boeing&;s 787 Dreamliner months before the CEO knew about it, to accurately forecasting US presidential elections—prediction markets have realized some amazing successes by aggregating the wisdom of crowds.Until now, the potential for this unique approach has remained merely an interesting curiosity. But a handful of innovative organizations—GE, Google, Motorola, Microsoft, Eli Lily, even the CIA—has successfully tapped employee insights to change how business gets done.In Oracles, Don Thompson explains how these and other firms use prediction markets to make better decisions, describing what could be the origins of a social revolution. Thompson shows how prediction markets can:• draw on the hidden knowledge of every employee• tap the “intellectual bandwidth&; of retired employees• replace surveys• substitute for endless meetingsBy showing successes and failures of real organizations, and identifying the common roadblocks they&;ve overcome, Oracles offers a guide to begin testing expertise against the collective wisdom of employees and the market—all to the benefit of their bottom line.
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