Prediction markets are an increasingly popular way to gather collective intelligence for better decision-making and more accurate forecasting. Prediction markets have been widely covered in the media and have been created for topics ranging from Academy Award winners to U.S. Presidential Elections. Enterprises are now beginning to use them, recognizing the potential benefits of prediction markets for scenarios such as prioritizing ideas, forecasting sales, predicting demand, or assessing product deployment dates. When properly executed, prediction markets have proven to be more accurate than many traditional methods of polling, surveying, and equal to or better than expert forecasts which is why IBM is investigating Predictive Idea Markets - a potentially new way to use prediction markets techniques and approaches for gathering consensus on business ideas.

Using a stock-trading format, participants express the strength of their opinions by 'investing' tokens in top ideas they believe will succeed, receiving 100 tokens to invest in each market. "Investing" involves selecting a question and “buying” an idea or answer using tokens. "Buying an idea" can express belief that the idea has high potential to succeed. Participants need not invest in all markets but may focus on the ones they have an affinity towards or feel they have some level of knowledge or insight about. The results of participants' collective choices will help inform participants at a Smarter Cities summit being held in New York in October.

Participants: feel free to invite friends and coworkers to explore the Predictive Idea Market and participate in thinking about how cities can be made smarter. Register to start trading.

Note: Unlike many traditional prediction markets, there will be no 'winning idea,' Ideas with highest value will be examined as indicative of the crowd's opinion over the time of this experiment.

In the questions below, a "major city" can be thought of as a city similar to New York, or with a population over five million citizens