SpigIT: an enterprise social network that’s fun and games

Spigit mixes enterprise social networks with game design and personal incentives to encourage new ideas and steward them from the process of discovery to implementation. Employees are encouraged to participate in stock-market-like games using the good old incentives to solicit cooperation -- fame (i.e. reputation) and fortune.

Spigit’s reputation ranking algorithm, RepuRank, promotes recognition of outstanding contributors to the organization. Employees gain a tool for tapping into knowledge across the organization. Employees also have a chance to win virtual stocks (“Spocks”) or currency (Spigits), which some Spigit customers allowed employees to redeem at the company store.

The company creates two markets one for harvesting innovative ideas within the organization and the other extracting latent knowledge from employees. The Innovation Market allows employees to compete for the best idea and win points for contributing to and reviewing other ideas. The Prediction Market allows employee to pool knowledge by buying and selling Spocks based on the outcome of an event, such as a question on the success of a new slogan. The current market price becomes an indicator of the option’s probability.

Spigit isn’t the first vendor to market with an enterprise social network. BEA, IBM-Lotus, and Connectbeam offer social networks for business. But Spigit is the first enterprise vendor to organizations to build an incentive for individuals to participate in the network.  That's been enough for six companies, including SAP, to purchase the softwarel notes CEO Paul Pluschkell.

Spigit is priced in three packages: a single annual amount, per user and per server, and then as a service. The software is targeted at being the equivalent of one senior IT executive. Prices will range depending on discounts with $300,000 for an annual fee for unlimited number of users to $10 to $25 per user per month. The break-even point, says  Pluschkell, is 3,000 users.

Adding a goal and an incentive to participate will be critical for the success of the software’s deployment. More important though will be providing the right corporate culture that enforces the collaborative messages espoused by Spigit. Without that sort of investment, no collaboration software will succeed.