Cultivate Labs Blog

Discussing how crowd forecasting, internal crowdfunding, and other new workplace trends can be used to improve the #futureofwork

By Zach Siewert on Oct 25, 2022

Well, that was embarrassing: lessons from forecasting on UK’s prime minister

A key practice of a good forecaster is doing post-mortems on your forecasts. Whether the result was good or bad, a quality post-mortem can help you identify what you did well or poorly and can improve on next time. See what Zach learned about his blindspots on a recent forecast about now-former UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss.

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By Adam Siegel on Sep 26, 2022

Bertelsmann Stiftung and its Foundation launch RANGE to examine Transatlantic Relations

Cultivate Labs is excited to announce a partnership with The Bertelsmann Stiftung, an independent foundation headquartered in Germany, and the Washington, DC-based Bertelsmann Foundation, part of the Stiftung’s international network.

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By Adam Siegel on Sep 06, 2022

Cultivate Labs and Pytho.io Team Up to Create a Forecaster Training Curriculum for INFER

Cultivate Labs and Pytho.io announced today the creation of a forecaster training curriculum for INFER (INtegrated Forecasting and Estimates of Risk), a crowdsourced forecasting program run by the Advanced Research Lab for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS) at the University of Maryland.

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By Ben Roesch on Aug 04, 2022

Why We Stopped Supporting Prediction Markets

For many years, Cultivate Forecasts supported two different forecasting interface modes: prediction markets and opinion pools (aka opinion surveys or probability surveys). In a prediction market, forecasters buy and sell shares of answer options using real or virtual/fantasy currency (ie. I spend $10 to buy shares of “Yes” in the market “Will candidate X win the election?”). In an opinion pool, forecasters assign a probability to each potential answer (ie. I for

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By Adam Siegel on May 17, 2022

Tell us how you may be wrong

As consumers learn to use these forecasts as part of their own analysis and decision-making, we've been thinking through how we can make sure they see a complete picture - not just the one represented by the graph visualization that tracks the consensus, but why that consensus may be wrong. We want the consumer to always question their assumptions and question the consensus.

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By Adam Siegel on May 03, 2022

A Contrarian Sort

Questioning the assumptions and probabilities of the consensus is a simple best practice of forecasting. Do I currently agree with the prevailing winds, or do I predict something different will occur? We've recently introduced the "contrarian sort..."

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By Adam Siegel on Apr 20, 2022

Assessing the credibility of a crowd forecast

With increased attention to crowdsourced generated forecasts as guidance to critical decisions comes the need to be as transparent as possible about the credibility of a current forecast.

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By Sean Kucer on Oct 18, 2021

Base Rates for Forecasting and Decision-Making

To see the future, one must first see the past. Base rates are a hallmark of good forecasting and decision-making - start using them in your work today.

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By Zach Siewert on Oct 18, 2021

New Series: Everything is Forecasting

Many of our clients find that going through the process of making forecasts and "practicing" improves their "off-platform" decisions. That's why we're starting a new blog series about applying forecasting principles to other areas of life and work.

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By Adam Siegel on Oct 07, 2021

Tracking the Outcome of Strategic Questions with Crowd Forecasting

To understand a big, fuzzy strategic question, you need to break it down into digestible signals you can forecast. Here's how we do it.

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By Zach Siewert on Aug 31, 2021

New Type of Forecasting Interface Creates a Lot of Options

We’re excited to announce the launch of a beta version of a new forecasting capability on the Cultivate platform we’re calling “multi-time period questions.” This new type of forecasting input now gives us the ability to collect several points of input from the forecaster all at once.

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By Adam Siegel on Apr 26, 2021

Don't Let Your Forecasts Get Too Stale

For a long time we've had a rudimentary reminder system a user can set after they make a forecast. But now, we've introduced a more intelligent "nudging" system to ensure a larger percentage of forecasters are updating their forecasts on a regular basis.

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By Thalia Baumgarten on Dec 07, 2020

Small Company Life

Thinking of working for a small company? Here are some of my experiences from joining Cultivate Labs!

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By Vanessa Pineda on Dec 07, 2020

Cultivate Forecasts Latest Updates: Leaderboard filters, source link section, cleansed emails & more

The latest Cultivate Forecasts platform updates as of December 7, 2020.

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By Adam Siegel on Oct 22, 2020

The Unintended Consequences of Running Internal Forecasting Tournaments

Forecasting tournaments are compelling but you should be eyes wide open to some negative consequences if you run them inside your organization.

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By Adam Siegel on Jul 21, 2020

Cultivate Labs Completes its SOC 2 Type 1 Audit

SOC 2 certification is widely recognized as a gold standard for data security and requires companies to establish and follow strict information security policies and procedures.

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By Vanessa Pineda on Jul 02, 2020

Cultivate Forecasts Latest Updates: Infographics, discussion features, and performance feedback

The latest Cultivate Forecasts platform updates as of July 2, 2020.

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By Adam Siegel on Jun 09, 2020

Cultivate Forecasts Latest Updates: Team requests, hot word alerts, reporting features, badges

The latest Cultivate Forecasts platform updates as of June 9, 2020.

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By Adam Siegel on Jun 08, 2020

Expert Q&A: The U.S. Government’s Challenges for Ongoing Risk Communication About COVID-19

An interview with an expert in risk communication about the ongoing challenges of communicating about COVID-19

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By Vanessa Pineda on Apr 24, 2020

Cultivate Forecasts now offers presentation mode to capture live forecasts at meetings

New presentation feature lets people forecast -- and see the results update in real-time.

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By Vanessa Pineda on Apr 23, 2020

Cultivate Forecasts just got a lot more collaborative with team functionality

Forecasting in teams can lead to greater accuracy, and we've got the features to make it possible, like private team pages with discussion boards and team rankings.

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By Adam Siegel on Apr 22, 2020

New Platform to Crowdsource Experts' Forecasts on COVID-19 Pandemic

Partnership by Cultivate Labs and Good Judgment Inc will aggregate forecasts from experts to better understand the implications of the COVID-19 crisis and share the results with decision makers.

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By Adam Siegel on Dec 17, 2019

Prediction Markets give hope to reproducibility crisis in scientific experiments

I talk to Anna Dreber Almenberg, an economist at the Stockholm School of Economics about prediction markets she's running to try and address the reproducibility crisis in science.

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By Adam Siegel on Oct 24, 2019

Schedule Chicken

Schedule chicken is when someone is personally behind on their work, but doesn't say anything because they think someone else will, and take the heat for it, thus protecting their own ass. This apparently goes on at Apple, and is completely absurd. There's another way.

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By Adam Siegel on Oct 15, 2019

Announcing Flashcast

We're excited to announce the availability of a new product, Flashcast. Flashcast is an entirely new way to interact with your audience. Ask them to make predictions about a related topic and watch the results, live.

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