I’m joining the roster at the Chicago Prediction Market summit.
I’ll try to explain how Zocalo can improve the prospects for adoption of Prediction
Markets in business by making the technology more accessible, and by doing a better
job of publicizing results so more companies may be convinced that this is valuable
technology. I’ll try to argue that the academic results are in and pretty uniformly
positive; the thing that is lacking that would enable or encourage more widespread
adoption is evidence that these markets produce valuable input into organizations’
deliberative processes. The existing companies selling PMs into business haven’t
been able to talk enough about how these markets have helped their customers.
I’m
looking forward to hearing what
Cass Sunstein has to say. His article in the Hahn & Tetlock
book is quite interesting. He points out that groups that make decisions as a result
of meetings and discussions make common mistakes in their reasoning, and that markets
seem to have opposite tendencies. In the article, he seems to suggest that markets
should be used instead, but the point about countervailing tendencies suggests that
finding ways to use them together might be a better approach.
Arik Johnson’s
background is in competitive intelligence; he’s going to talk about how markets can
be used in exploring the competitive landscape. It will be good to see Robin Hanson,
Justin Wolfers, and Michael Gorham again (all were at the DIMACS event in early
2005), as well as perenials John Delaney (from Tradesports), David Perry (Consensus
Point), and Emile Servan-Schreiber (NewsFutures).