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Does gamification work in innovation management? And if so, how? Innovation contests have gained popularity as effective innovation instruments. Their full innovative capacity can only be achieved if collaboration and joint idea development amongst participants are supported through socio-intellectual facilitation. The purpose of this research is to understand and explore how game mechanics can be employed to facilitate participants in innovation contest settings.

This work elaborates a conceptual model proposing that game mechanics, such as points and leader boards, are an effective tool to realise a set of socio-intellectual facilitation objectives like participation, engagement, acknowledgement and cognitive assistance. The conceptual model in turn is examined using insights drawn from analysing participants´ experiences of a gamified innovation contest. The contest serves as the treatment within a quasi-experimental research design. Post-treatment data for analysis is collected through a survey and subsequent focus group interviews. The results of the study suggest that the applied game mechanics directly drive socio-intellectual facilitation objectives in innovation workshops.

This research work contributes to the growing body of knowledge on business gamification and is mainly directed at gamification researchers and business students. Beyond its theoretical merits, it offers valuable insights for innovation practitioners and workshop facilitators.

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