Cultivate Labs Blog

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

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By Jess Price on Feb 07, 2017

Cultivate Community February 2017 Newsletter

Our February 2017 newsletter is out: Take a look!

By Adam Siegel on Jan 31, 2017

Is Toxic Culture Killing Your Company?

Thanks to the Illinois Technology Association (of which we are a member) for publishing our guest blog post on toxic corporate culture. We make the argument that before you can heavily invest in shiny new technology as you prepare for the #futureofwork, you should look to make positive changes to your culture first to take maximum advantage of your investment.

By Vanessa Pineda on Dec 19, 2016

What Happens When You Provide a Refund Mechanism in a Crowdfunding App?

In the application itself, we created a feature you won’t find on Kickstarter - a “refund” button - to encourage employees to move their investments around.

By Vanessa Pineda on Nov 22, 2016

How Trump Stumped the Prediction Markets

Why the prediction markets signaled the wrong result for the Presidential election.

By Adam Siegel on Nov 17, 2016

Radical Budgeting: Introduce a Crowdsourced VC Model for Inside Your Organization

What if you tried to supplant the entire funding model inside organizations to not only mimic VC rounds, but use crowdfunding to decide what ideas/projects/initiatives should get resources?

By Adam Siegel on Oct 13, 2016

Future of Work: What skills will be most valuable?

We recently had an article run in the Huffington Post about the future of work and what skills will be the most valuable given the new ways organizations will be structured and their desires to be more agile...

By Cultivate Labs on Jun 09, 2016

Calling all Tornado Enthusiasts

How does probability forecasting play a role in informing conclusions as to when tornadoes, and of what size and frequency, will occur? More on this and the Summer Tornado Forecasting Contest.

By Adam Siegel on May 10, 2016

Three Trends Set to Revolutionize How We Work

Our new white paper about "The Future of How We Work"

By Adam Siegel on Apr 25, 2016

Disrupting Product Development Using Internal Crowdsourcing

Using crowdsourcing only at the front-stages of the product development cycle means organizations are missing out on a big opportunity to further tap the wisdom and knowledge of the organization. Here's how you can use internal crowdsourcing across your entire development lifecycle.

By Adam Siegel on Mar 17, 2016

How Internal Crowdsourcing Will Transform the Way We Do Business

For years, companies of all shapes and sizes have utilized the power of the crowd to research, test, and drum up support for their products or service offerings. It makes sense — tapping into the external crowd can not only power idea generation at scale and in real time, but it can also drive engagement among your most important brand ambassadors.Traditionally, market research has dictated that customers (or people like them) are always the best sources of information. But this is limiting...

By Adam Siegel on Feb 10, 2016

The Circle of (Work) Life

One of our developers left Cultivate recently to go work for a much larger company - an experience he has never had before. They are throwing more money at him than we ever could, and he will work on a team larger than our entire company...

By Adam Siegel on Jan 11, 2016

Uber's Costly Fail in Germany is Symptomatic of an Age-Old Problem in Big Companies

It is incredible that a company of Uber's size, with the experience they have entering new markets is still having the kinds of colossal failures they are having in Germany. But Uber is certainly not alone in costly missteps like this and billions are being lost every year. Yet a solution already exists: your employees.

By Ben Golden on Jan 08, 2016

Bayesian Reasoning and Prediction Markets

I enjoyed John Horgan's piece on Bayes Theorem for Scientific American. Bayes Theorem and Bayesian reasoning are highly applicable when thinking about forecasting and prediction markets; indeed, one prediction market built a Bayes Net into its platform. In this post I'll explain what Bayesian reasoning is, why it matters to prediction markets, and give a concrete (but semi-fictitious) example of how it's applied.

By Ben Golden on Dec 16, 2015

What Is Liquidity And How Does It Affect Prediction Markets?

Our sites use a popular prediction market algorithm called LMSR to determine how markets adjust when someone makes a forecast, and how user scores are affected by making correct and incorrect forecasts.

By Ben Golden on Dec 09, 2015

Forecasting Hard Questions

I've been trying to pick NFL game winners. I'm not using any complex analytical model; rather, I'm making decisions the way most sports bettors do--I watch some games, read the news, and use my judgment. I make each of my picks on SportsCast, which allows me to track my performance, interact with other forecasters, and track the performance of the prediction market--that is, the collective performance of all the forecasters on SportsCast.

By Ben Roesch on Dec 08, 2015

Measuring Accuracy in Prediction Markets and Opinion Poll/Pools

One of the first and most important questions we get from clients, forecasters, and consumers of our data is: “How accurate are these forecasts?”. In order to answer this question, we have utilized and built upon a widely accepted proper scoring rule, i.e. a way to measure accuracy for a probabilistic forecast.

By Ben Golden on Dec 04, 2015

Getting Started With Prediction Markets

Joining a prediction market can be confusing and anxiety-inducing. It's easy to be overwhelmed by all the questions, to not understand the forecasting interface, or to have trouble forming opinions to base forecasts on. All of this is pretty natural--as a now-experienced forecaster, I can remember these feelings the first time I joined a prediction market. In this post I'll address a few specific emotional barriers that make it difficult to start forecasting.

By Ben Golden on Nov 23, 2015

Demystifying Unicorns Through Prediction Markets

On a recent podcast, Jack Schultz and I discussed two razor companies that are poised to become unicorn companies. Unicorns--startups that grow to billion-dollar valuations while remaining private--are somewhat mysterious and the subject of continuous speculation.

By Cultivate Labs on Nov 19, 2015

Prediction Markets -- Beginner to Intermediate

Wikipedia’s intro paragraph for prediction markets is the following:Prediction markets (also known as predictive markets, information markets, decision markets, idea futures, event derivatives, or virtual markets) are exchange-traded markets created for the purpose of trading the outcome of events.

By Jess Price on Nov 17, 2015

Logo is a four letter word: Branding Cultivate Labs

Creating a logo for a company can be a daunting task. In this post our Creative Director, Jessica Price explains how we landed on the final logo for Cultivate Labs.

By Ben Golden on Nov 16, 2015

Predict Daily Fantasy Football Leaders on SportsCast

One use of prediction markets I've been really excited about is forecasting individual players' performances in major sports. These predictions are incredibly useful when playing fantasy sports--both daily fantasy and season-long leagues--and the forecasts that currently exist tend to be, in my experience, pretty mediocre. Prediction markets present an opportunity for the wisdom of the crowds to intervene, and will likely lead to more accurate forecasts.

By Adam Siegel on Nov 09, 2015

Finding value in the much maligned "networking event"

While I’ll grant the naysayers that some networking events end up being a waste of time, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find one aspect universally helpful: the ability to have short, 5 minute conversations with everyone I meet about our business.

By Ben Golden on Oct 27, 2015

What Is A Prediction? What Is Crazy? Markets Can Help

Over at Grantland, Zach Lowe has published an article featuring 35 crazy prediction for the upcoming NBA season. Writes Lowe: For this to be fun, we have to find the sweet spot between bat-crap crazy and probable. Let’s all be wrong together!

By Ben Golden on Oct 13, 2015

Prediction Markets In A World Hostile To Gambling

Two key take-aways from the emerging scandal surrounding Daily Fantasy sites: one, gambling data can be extremely valuable, and two: the only thing Americans love more than gambling is hating on gambling. Taken together, these findings illustrate why large-scale prediction markets present a path towards improving human knowledge in a wide range of topics.

By Jess Price on Oct 06, 2015

VC's should be doing this

Amongst the leadership teams of the portfolio companies at any medium to large investment firm, there is an incredible amount of experience, wisdom, and perspective that is not collectively being taken advantage of.

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