I just finished a fascinating phone interview with Emile Servan-Schreiber, the Co-founder and CEO of NewsFutures, a Paris and New York-based firm that helps companies set up prediction markets as a way to forecast trends. I spoke with Emile in regards to a special issue I’m writing about the impact of Web 2.0 on business research for the April issue of The Information Advisor.
This is a fascinating area, which has been given a huge boost in public awareness recently because of New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki’s hot book, The Wisdom of Crowds.
Predictive markets work on the principle that under the right circumstances, groups of ordinary people acting independently will as a whole make more accurate decisions than any individual expert. This has some potentially important implications for market research, forecasting, and other traditional methods businesses have been using to discern industry, product and consumer trends. Already firms like Eli Lilly and Corning have been using predictive markets to help them make better decisions down the road.
A very useful site that tracks a wide range of predictive markets is run by Chris F. Masse on
this site.
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I’m looking forward to seeing the article on prediction markets within the corporate environment. If you are interested in other companies that provide prediction market software, see Consensus Point.
Cheers – David
Comment by David Perry — March 5, 2006 @ 8:17 pm