Gamification is a business strategy which applies game design techniques to non-game contexts to drive user behavior.
According to Gartner Research Report, it is estimated that by 2015, more than 50 percent of organizations that manage innovation processes will gamify those processes. By the end of 2014, Gartner predicts that over 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one "gamified" application, and that "gamification is positioned to become a significant trend in the next five years." The gamification market is expected to reach $5.5B in 2018.
Gamification has been picking up major momentum and has gained support from industry heavy weights such as such as Bing Gordon, Al Gore, J.P. Rangaswami, Chief Scientist of Salesforce.com, and many more. Businesses including EMC (Business Community), Autodesk (Trial Adoption), Kendall-Jackson Winery (Mobile Application), and thousands more are using gamification to drive engagement.
For a full list of examples applied to many different industries, skip ahead

Since creation of the Gamification Wiki in November 2010, Gamification has surged in popularity and has quickly become one of the most talked about trends. Gamification.org was created to be the ultimate resource for the emerging Gamification Industry, creating a collaborative space for those interested to come together as a community and learn and explore what works and what doesn't and to collectively benefit from the knowledge and wisdom of the community.

Below we've conveniently provided links to the most important sections of the wiki to help you get started taking advantage of this awesome resource immediately!

Gamification - A general overview of gamification.