John Sanei.

Explaining what he does and how it links into the digital world, Sanei said he believes and predicts that gamification will take over every aspect of our lives. As a result, in his Summit talk, he will do three things: Firstly, prove that it is inherent as human beings to want to play games, as we have been doing so from a very young age.

Augmenting and creating our own reality

In the second step, Sanei will demonstrate companies and organisations around the world that are having phenomenal success in applying gamification – one of those examples is McDonald’s, which has implemented a till training game to fast-track tellers through a service of roughly seven seconds per client. City & Guilds Kineo, which helped create the game, says there’s been a reported “increase in average cheque by 15p, totalling an increased average of £18,000 per restaurant,” where the game was implemented.

In the last section, Sanei speaks of the future of gamification: Where it’s going and what it’s being fuelled by. He says this is down to two things – quantum computing and Magic Leap. He says quantum computing is billions of times faster than the supercomputers currently available, and coming to fruition in the next couple of years. Sanei combines his mention with that of what Wired calls: “the most secret, multibillion dollar startup in the history of humankind, Magic Leap,” which he says is already valued at $4.5bn before even selling a single product.

It’s a new form of computation that fits into our glasses, so we can augment and create a brand new reality in front of our very eyes. This means “every aspect of our lives will be gamified, rewarded and recognised,” by these new glasses, coming out soon.

Hypersensitive, hyper-informed consumers

Speaking of positive business trends and how everything is going digital, Sanei mentioned he also talks about the future of leadership, which is very much tied into the future of digitisation of organisations. Simply put, leadership takes the organisation on a journey of digitisation. Leadership of the future and leadership of the now really only needs two key skillsets, says Sanei. Before, leaders had to know more than their employees and to be strategic about stuff, and employees were there to take orders. That has shifted because employees now have access to information at their fingertips, they are hypersensitive and hyper-informed.

Leaders thus need to do two things: increase the ability to improve emotional intelligence and EQ inside the organisation, and also lead their organisations’ digitisation. That’s because of both the dizzying speed at which technology is improving our communication computer to computer, and the dizzying speed of it stopping our human connection. So leaders need to become very good at creating human connection through empathy and EQ, and also understanding how they will change their organisations based on digitisation. Sanei says both of these pillars are what the future of digitisation is all about: how are we leading our organisations, what are we getting ourselves trained in, insofar as leading organisations for the future – with empathy, EQ and digitisation as a lead. He concludes, “We can’t just ask the IT guys, we need to know what’s changing in our industry and how we will personally lead that business.”

It seems digital’s definitely dominating the local business scene, in every industry. That’s why you can’t afford to miss out on the IAB Digital Summit on 16 March! Until then, click here for my interview with IAB SA’s CEO Josephine Buys, here for my digital debrief with fellow speaker Davin Phillips of CSA, here for a recap on all of this year’s Bookmark Awards finalists, here for what to expect from the IAB Digital Summit and keep an eye on our IAB Digital Summit and Bookmark Awards special section for all the latest updates!