Dual Degree Program in Technology and Management (T&M-DDP) invited Mr. Rochak AGRAWAL, Director, Global Portfolio Manager, UBS, to share his innovation experience and the new concept of Gamification at the Executive Forum on 29 September 2017 with over 100 students.

Mr AGRAWAL is an experienced innovator who is representing UBS in Accenture Innovation Lab, Hong Kong and various innovation forums and a mentor to Fintech startups in Hong Kong. He won the Innovation Challenge at UBS and was awarded 150,000 CHF seed funding to pilot gamification at the bank.

Mr AGRAWAL first explained what innovation was and how it can happen anywhere. He shared how innovation worked in financial sector and led to various Fintech such as Bitcoin, P2P, Crowdfunding etc..

He introduced a new concept of Gamification to students. Gamification takes the characteristics people like about games and adds them to everyday actions in order to make the actions more interesting so it is able to keep engaging people. It is very feasible now as video games have become really popular and there has been a change in technology like no other. Many gadgets and technology are widely used by the general public in particular mobile devices, constant connection and sensors. For example, a sportswear brand produced a wrist band to record the physical activities of the users and added-in game elements. Users could turn all tracked activities into points to unlock achievements, share with friends and engage others in competition with a mobile app.   

The challenges about gamification are people get bored or cheating. Mr AGRAWAL showed students how to design gamification to satisfy people’s intrinsic satisfaction which can motivate the people to keep playing and engaged. He reminded the students that lives in games were unlimited but there was only one chance in real life, so gamification design should be cautious of potential dangers.  He used real world examples and experiences at UBS to show students how gamification was designed and executed. He also gamified the forum by giving students rewards points if they asked/ answered questions or penalty if they were distracted by mobile phone. Both students and the speaker enjoyed the interactions.