In this interview with CalvinAyre.com’s Becky Liggero, Mats Westerlund of Quickspin explains how failure becomes part of the company’s innovation.
All businesses want to be more innovative. They want to be innovative because it leads to wealth creation. Innovation is a journey of coming up with new ideas leading to the creation of a new product, process or service.
But higher reward demands greater risks. Studies have shown that failure and innovation go hand in hand. That’s why many entrepreneurs seeking greater yields encourage their employees to fail. They know that failing, and how companies deal with failure, is a very big part of innovation.
That’s why Mats Westerlund of Quickspin encourages his employees to take a big, edgy risk and at the same time gives them space to fail until they are able to come up with a bright new idea that will lead to new products, services or systems that add value or improve quality.
“Basically, the thing is, anyone in the company comes up with idea. It’s not just a one-man show, or few people that come up with all the ideas. So we try to get everyone involved. Because, I think, the product also becomes better if you get everyone involved in it,” Westerlund told CalvinAyre.com. “So that is a big part of our process, and also, to ensure everyone is allowed to fail. I think failure is something good. If you are allowed to fail, then you also have the guts to come up with ideas.”
One of the fruits of these significant failures is Achievements Engine, a gamification module that drives player engagement and value. Westerlund said the company designed and developed Achievements Engine to offer players a more fun and rewarding experience.
The engine makes use of six unique game events that take place in all the supplier’s slots, such as when a scatter appears or when the player has a win with two wild symbols, and rewards players with Quickspin Tokens for achieving them.
By giving back players part of their expected losses via Quickspin tokens, Westerlund said that they are able to add huge value to their experience.
“Yeah, Achievements is our new big thing. Sort of a layer on top of the game. Sort of a gamification layer, which is really interesting. It is based on our bigger product, which is called Quickspin Promote. Achievements is part of it,” Westerlund explained. “Basically, what happens is that when you play your slots, you collect by achieving different things in the game, like getting 10 scatters or something like that. You are rewarded with tokens, and these tokens you can actually use to buy yourself into a free spin. So this is just a fun, additional layer on top of the games.”
Quickspin’s new launch is in line with Playtech’s strategy of integrating additional real-time engagement and retention features and functionality to its offering, enabling licensees to further incentivize, analyze and reward players using cutting-edge gamification, social and communication tools.
