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 Faith Powell on Feb 09, 2023
Learning and improving our forecasts together: crowd forecast change alerts
Crowd forecasting allows you to get signals about events before they happen. We're making it even easier to be alerted to important signals by introducing crowd forecast change alerts – which notify you of sudden shifts in the consensus forecast.
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By Henry Tolchard on Nov 03, 2022
Crowd Forecasting and Effective Altruism
Many effective altruist (EA) core values illustrate why they are enthusiastic to use crowd forecasting methods. EAs seek to tackle problems of global significance, placing an emphasis on not only doing good, but doing good effectively. "When decision-makers in government have to make high-stakes judgment calls, using rigorous forecasting techniques can improve our ability to predict the future and make better decisions."
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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 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 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 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 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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By Adam Siegel on May 31, 2019
We need to make it feel ok to be wrong sometimes
No one enjoys being wrong. It’s an unpleasant emotional experience for any of us. But that’s exactly the risk we’re suggesting people take when we ask them to make a forecast about the future.
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By Adam Siegel on Mar 14, 2019
The Rise of Anonymous Tough Love (And Not a Moment Too Soon)
When we start projects with our clients, one of the first items we talk about is whether they want people to be anonymous in our prediction market or if they’ll use their real identities. The answer often reveals a lot, both about company culture and their personal fears of what will be made transparent. The spoiler alert is most don’t want anonymity.
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By Adam Siegel on Mar 05, 2019
The Culture of Fear Problem
After working with dozens of companies who have culture initiatives, I’m convinced their multi-million dollar investments in consultants, employee time, internal marketing, and the like will only see a partial return because a blocker is in their way: their culture of fear.
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By Vanessa Pineda on Nov 01, 2018
What are “flash crowds” and how do we recruit them?
Our bread and butter working with clients is organizing their employees to participate in crowdsourcing exercises. Recently we have been approached more to help get forecasts from external crowds, either to support research projects, or to better understand what outside experts or customers think.
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By Adam Siegel on Oct 22, 2018
Before we talk, are YOU ready?
In the last month we’ve had two potential clients, after receiving proposals from us for projects, say they needed to step back and start the projects very differently than what we had originally discussed. They just weren't ready yet, they acknowledged...
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By Adam Siegel on Aug 13, 2018
Thoughts on Augur, the decentralized, blockchain prediction market
I've been watching for the last few years the announcement, long delay, then recent launch of Augur, the decentralized, blockchain-based prediction market. First off, despite it taking a long time to launch, Augur finally did, and kudos to them for doing so. Building a prediction market from scratch is not easy, building a prediction market on top of immature technology is harder, and building a prediction market to be completely decentralized with smart contracts is downright scary.
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By Adam Siegel on May 25, 2018
Pitch Perfect Security with Lending Club
We're pairing up with Lending Club to sponsor a monthly event where cybersecurity startups pitch their companies, and the audience gets to make predictions on our prediction market about how they're going to do in the next year in terms of fundraising, hiring, etc.
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By Cultivate Labs on Mar 19, 2018
The Traffic Light Metaphor for Project Status is a Disaster
Everyone who has worked in corporate America has seen or used it. The traffic light metaphor for status. Red, there’s significant problems with a project. Yellow, there are some issues, but we’re going to make it. Green, all is good. Unfortunately, this system is a disaster for decision making.
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By Adam Siegel on Dec 08, 2017
Very Satisfied with Client Satisfaction Survey
Recently, we launched a formal client satisfaction survey effort using a third party. Here's how we did.
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By Cultivate Labs on Dec 05, 2017
Cultivate Forecasts - Mobile App Update for iOS and Android
Register an account for Cultivate Forecasts mobile directly in the app.
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By Adam Siegel on Nov 28, 2017
Indian state Gujarat election prediction market pilot launched as precursor to 2019 general election
We're excited to be working with Idealantis, a startup based in Hyderabad, India on a prediction market pilot about the upcoming Gujarat state elections. Working with research organization People's Pulse, Idealantis has launched this test as a precursor to a country-wide effort for the general elections coming in 2019.
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By Adam Siegel on Nov 13, 2017
Sales and Operational Planning: Bad Forecasts Don't Have to be a Given
Cultivate Labs CEO, Adam Siegel, recently spoke at the Institute for Business Forecasting and Planning and spent time hearing directly form attendees about the challenges they face. He shares lessons learned about the challenges sales and operations planners face in their roles, and how crowdsourced forecasting can alleviate them and improve their forecast accuracy and efficiency.
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By Adam Siegel on Sep 27, 2017
Help LG Predict the Future
In partnership with LG Display, we are running a 6 month forecasting tournament about the high-end display industry.
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By Ben Roesch on Sep 11, 2017
Introduction to Blockchain-based Prediction Markets Terminology
Real-money prediction markets are illegal in the U.S., but blockchain technology is giving rise to several digital currency based prediction markets based on Ethereum. Cultivate Labs defines common terminology associated with blockchain-based prediction markets.
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By Ben Golden on Sep 06, 2017
New to Prediction Markets? Four Tips to Get Started.
Joining a prediction market or prediction pool can be intimidating. You may feel like you've plunged into a world of impossible questions, ongoing arguments, and have no idea where to start. You might think there's no way you could possibly add anything, or that your forecasts couldn't possible be better than anyone else's. But prediction markets don't have to be intimidating - here are four tips to get started.
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Our thoughts on internal crowdsourcing and the future of work.
