"You have to have a really hyper connection," Hamilton says. "You have to get them interested in connection and talking, you have to reward them for their own activities. We can't always be in front of them in a physical sense, so we have to create a number of little virtual tactics just to build community and attract kind of a playfulness and connectedness across the company."

IBM hasn't developed any one specific game, he adds, but game elements are found in many of its enterprise products. For example, IBM Connections, formerly Lotus Connections, is a social media platform that is "very playful," he says, with chat, networks of colleagues, and so on.