Relying on raw numbers alone is never good, but no metric system will ever solve that problem. What I’m proposing is a system that can (hopefully) give people a more detailed breakdown of what employees are doing well, where they’re doing poorly, doing so in a way that’s more difficult to “game”, and is easily adaptable to changes in focus from management based on the performance by the team/individuals.

I’m not saying what I’m proposing is immune to “gaming”, but by taking multiple, distinct measurements, it should at least be more resilient against it.

I don’t necessarily know how you collect the “team” data I alluded to, but I know that it’s far more useful than the individual contributors to the organisation as a whole.

The “ka-ching” sound doesn’t bother me 1 way or the other. It’s childish, irreverent, and maybe unprofessional in the traditional workplace sense, but that’s part of the appeal of gamification. It’s fun, and it’s like you’re playing, so these things are to be expected. That said, I’d save the “ka-ching” for things that explicitly refer to dollars and use another sound effect for getting points if you must do noises.

I’m starting to think that instead of 1 universal “score”, good gamification should take a more traditional RPG route, and measure a series of “stats”. In the context of the help desk system you mentioned, the “base stats” would be something like:

Number of tickets closed
Number of reopened tickets
Number of times SLA missed

You can also include some “ratings”, stuff like:

Efficiency (Average number of days it took you to close a ticket)
Proficiency (Average number of tickets reopened)
Commitment (Number of times you missed SLA / Total number of days in measurement period)
Satisifaction (How happy the user was with your work, something like “average stars received” if that’s the metric you want to use in this system, or scale of 1-5, etc.)

You can adjust the math and measurements as you see fit, and reset stats periodically, but you get the basic idea. By tracking a variety of distinct attributes, people get a more holistic measurement of performance, as well as a clearer measurement of overall performance. It also allows managers to see any organic specializations forming (i.e. Employee 1 has very good user-satisfaction stats, even if they’re not the quickest, Employee 2 is great for quick turnaround on tickets, etc). If you don’t like this, you can counsel employees on where specifically you want them to focus for improvements, or you can use this to help assign work.

Does something like this need to be done? Yep!

I’m not 100% sure patents should *only* apply to physical objects – but they are, at the very least, easy to verify

I think we should ban the patenting of anything that isn’t a physical object capable of being demonstrated to the patent officer at the time of filing. 

Another thing, patents are non-transferrable, ever. If the patent holder passes, or the business goes under before the patent expires, it’s public domain, no exceptions. 

If you sue for patent infringement, to establish standing you must show that you are indeed engaged in making whatever physical object you have the patent on. Hopefully this point and the 1 immediately previous will eliminate patent trolling and stop the “Patent Wars” arms race we see now.

I like the idea of capping the life of copyrights for businesses, but individual copyrights should be capped to the life of the creator. If you worked hard to create something, I’m OK with you being paid for it for as long as you live. But once you die, it’s public domain.

I’m OK with leaving patents as a first-to-file system, with the addition of allowing people to use prior art as an affirmative defense. If you can prove that whatever was patented was being done before the patent was filed, you are entitled to reimbursement of your legal fees and the patent is automatically invalidated.

Ideally I’d like to see us reach a point where we don’t really need patents at all, and the duration of an inventor’s “limited monopoly” is directly proportional to the degree of innovation. If it’s a simple, iterative improvement, you don’t deserve years of legalized monopoly protection. If you really pushed progress several steps forward, then it’ll take longer for someone else to reproduce. There’s still a legal, protected monopoly, but it’s based on the quality of the work the inventor does and the innovation itself. 

Note that nothing I’m proposing should affect the idea of trade secrets and trademarks. You can’t ape someone else’s product to the point a consumer can’t tell the difference between your product and the original. If a business keeps how it builds things or performs services private, and it’s released without permission, whoever leaked it and anyone who profits off that information being out there knowing that it’s ill-gotten should still pay up.

The big question is could we get desperately-needed patent reforms passed by a Congress who cares more about lobbying money than about what should be done?