Gamification Serving Eco-Innovation

Science and technology are creating products and services that can be customized for an individual or even by the user. Applications on mobile devices or services are allowing people to change and improve the world. One of the practices which is growing nowadays is “Gamification”

What our society is calling for is to find new innovative ways of “do more with less”. Many of global challenges are extremely complex such as climate change and a multi-stakeholder participation is required so as these challenges to be addressed.

Shaping solutions to problems that have economic, social, political, cultural and scientific dimensions needs a coordinated, multidisciplinary approach. A new way of collaboration and engagement of relevant experts or/and stakeholders should be deployed in order different skills and knowledge to be harnessed. The rich data and information generated by global social networks is yielding knowledge and insights that allow governments to better serve the needs of the public, companies to better meet the demands of the markets and scientists to better enhance research in order to serve community as a whole. Gamification coupled with social media could serve towards that direction in the eco-innovation discipline in order SMEs, policy makers and scientists/researchers to cooperate and make a step forward.

An Eco-Innovation web-platform can exploit gamification practices in some of its services/tools by framing them with the language and metaphors of gaming having as goal to engage, encourage and motivate its target groups-SMEs, policy makers, researchers-towards actions that will lead to interaction, collaboration, awareness and learning of the complex framework of eco-innovation resulting in its enhancement in various disciplines.

Through a gamified system Eco-Innovation web-platforms could serve towards the direction of:

1. Motivating SMEs to change their “business behavior” towards eco-innovation,
2. Motivating policy makers to take into consideration the state-of-the art in eco-innovation as well as problems which need instant response in an effective way
3. Motivating scientists to cope with more targeted eco-innovation research according to what policies and SMEs are asking for
4. Utilizing any kind of applications/platforms so as to make all the available information on eco-innovation easily accessible and in an comprehensive and meaningful way
5. Identifying new innovative ways of presenting e-publications in a more appealing way to the “readers”
6. Increasing registered users and platform traffic on a daily basis
7. Making users share more content with the community
8. Increasing time spend on the platform
9. Identifying the most influential users from each target group

Proposed gamified applications

A game could be developed allowing “players” to take the roles of stakeholders, such as businessmen, policy makers and scientists and make decisions about their livelihoods or regulatory authority and also see the impacts of their decisions on their own personal situation. This game will be an adaptable educational and learning tool for raising awareness about several issues regarding eco-innovation. It will be a tool for exploring and testing policy choices and for evaluating new products and services. It will use current policies, economic and scientific data, and indicators in the field of eco-innovation to create a powerful tool with real-world applications and impact. It will push collaboration and understanding between fields forward. In the beginning users will play as individuals actors but quickly, through a journey-like experience and during the course of action players’ skills will be matched with certain challenges coping successfully with what is called “flow” and making them form teams and apply collaborative decisions to achieve economic and environmental progress. This game could lead to new suggestions for policy development, research and behavior change.

Policy-related publications as well as best practices on eco-innovation could be disseminated, educate and inform target groups through innovative e-publications. A game-like approach will encourage users to take part in a game for developing a gamified e-publication that introduces existing policies and successful case studies of eco-innovative SMEs. Different parts of the targeted publication will be hidden in different real/existing locations around the EU such as libraries, universities, governmental agencies etc which are close related with environmental sustainability and users will have to explore these places in order to find these hidden parts. While exploring they will be faced with certain challenges and collaboration and competence among teams will be the key to win. In addition, these e-publications will include text descriptions which will be supported by activities and games offering modular, flexible micro-learning experiences.

There are lots of other ideas for gamified projects which could act as motivational tools for Eco-innovation stakeholders’ engagement resulting in measurable outcomes and serving sustainable development and environmental conservation.

Eco-Innovation is a discipline for innovation and sustainability and so is Gamification!!!

Dimitra Zervaki, EMBA, PMP, TTT

Επόμενο σεμινάριο Gamification: Αθήνα 5-6 Απριλίου. Πληροφορίες: http://humanasset.gr/4/227/288/