Friday, January 6, 2012
Insights and Opinions: How Gameification Is Accelerating Business and Education
For our Insights and Opinions section today, we feature author and technology forecaster Daniel Burrus, who talks about gamefication, and what it means for both business and education.
Anyone who has children or who has been around them for a while knows that kids, as well as young adults, are attracted to video games like flies are attracted to light. And while older adults may think the kids are being lazy or using their time idly when they're connected to their Wii or Xbox using a Kinect, in reality the kids are paving the way for business training and education.
How? It's part of a future trend I first identified back in the 1980s that we are now calling gameification, and today that growing trend is reaching a tipping point. If you think back, you'll see that many of the greatest technological advances in business have come from the world of kids and games. Actually, here's the exact flow of events: a concept or technology often begins with kids and the world of gaming. Some will start with the military, but it's amazing how many start with kids' games. From there it gains the attention of the adults in the business community as they learn how to adapt it to their needs, and finally it creeps into the education sector. So in many respects, the adults and the business world can learn much from the kids and their video games.
Read the rest of Daniel's article, Gameification: A Rapidly Growing Hard Trend That Will Accelerate Learning For Both Business and Education
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