Utilizing prediction markets in an executive search process

As the leader of English at Large's Search Committee for a new Executive Director in early 2009 we were facing several critical issues. We needed to hire a new Executive Director as quickly as possible. It was also critically important that the entire Board be engaged in the hiring process. To accommodate a large pool of candidates and enable a geographically distributed Board to participate an online prediction market was established with each candidate representing a market choice. Resumes and cover letters were distributed electronically to board members prior to the start of the market and the market was opened for approximately 10 days. The market proved extremely effective in sorting the candidates and allowing rapid execution against a tight deadline. A small pool of prospective hires were identified via this process who were then telephoned screened and interviewed per traditional methods. A new Executive Director was identified and hired in record time through this effort.

Difficult to create a news brand via prediction markets

The inability of hubdub.com (the news prediction game) and The Industry Standard to successfully leverage prediction markets into a new form of media brand demonstrates the difficulty of using this technology for this purpose.

Who is using prediction markets

A non-exhaustive search of published reports list the following companies as users of prediction markets: Eli Lilly (A. Bingham), Best Buy (J. Severts), Google (B. Cowgill), Harrahs (F. Keeton), Ingenix (T. Brown Stevenson), GE Research (C. LaComb), Headwall Photonics (D. Bannon), Corning, Qualcomm, Microsoft, and HP. Best buy, Google, Harrahs, Microsoft, and HP were using the approach for sales forecasting and Eli Lilly, GE Research, and Headwall Photonics were using the approach for new product development. I'm uncertain what the applications were at Corning, Qualcomm, and Ingenix.