Online prediction market games such as the Hollywood Stock Exchange) have been around for a while, but Fluid Innovation's new Virtual Ventures "game" asks players to compete to see who can be the best at predicting how enterprise software technology will fare in the market.

Every two weeks, a new "round" will begin where players are presented with five new technologies in the enterprise space. These are real technologies, just the names of the companies have been removed to prevent any bias in decision-making. Players then are asked to perform due diligence on the technologies, which includes reading research and learning about the technologies. Players are then given virtual money and asked to allocate their investment across the five technologies, in effect making a "bet" on which technology they think would succeed. A message board will let the players in each "round" discuss the technologies and add additional insights.

A sophisticated algorithm tracks the "value" of each of the technologies presented, and the value can increase based on the "wisdom of the crowd," but also as things happen, such as the technology getting adopted in the real world, or buyouts from other companies. Companies participating in the virtual ventures game receive the research from Fluid Innovations (a pretty solid business model), and the players of the game get bragging rights for being on the leaderboard, as well as the potential for real financial success later (the company might offer top predictors some financial rewards, and other companies might start to offer real venture capital opportunities for the best players). Fluid Innovations also says it plans to work with business schools and other venture capital organizations on opportunities.