Field of Science

Mr. Pink on solving complex problems

Totally share-worthy talk at TED: Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation.

Bottom line: Rewards don't work for problems where thinking out of the box is part of the solution. Science knows it, but apparently business managers don't. Doing it for money does not get the job done faster, except for very straight-forward tasks.

Mr. Pink is basically saying that when complex tasks needs to be solved, don't set monetary incentives. Sounds very much like grad-school to me.

2 comments:

  1. We’re also inspired and motivated by the work of Daniel Pink and appreciate your interest in the man behind the groundbreaking bestseller, A WHOLE NEW MIND. I’m excited to let you know that December 29 marks the release of Pink’s latest book, DRIVE.

    Bursting with big ideas, DRIVE is the rare book that will change how you think and transform how you live.

    Forget everything you thought you knew about how to motivate people--at work, at school, at home. It's wrong. As Daniel H. Pink explains in his new and paradigm-shattering book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, the secret to high performance and satisfaction in today's world is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

    Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does--and how that affects every aspect of our lives. He demonstrates that while the old-fashioned carrot-and-stick approach worked successfully in the 20th century, it's precisely the wrong way to motivate people for today's challenges. In Drive, he reveals the three elements of true motivation:

    *Autonomy- the desire to direct our own lives
    *Mastery- the urge to get better and better at something that matters
    *Purpose- the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves

    We hope Daniel Pink’s DRIVE will open your eyes and change the way you think in 2010!

    Please visit www.danpink.com and www.riverheadbooks.com for additional details.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lydia Hirt, thanks so much for the advertisement/review.

    Full disclosure: Lydia is the "Marketing Coordinator at the Putnam and Riverhead imprints of Penguin Group" (was easy to Google her), and DRIVE is published by Riverhead/Penguin.

    So thanks for that groundbreaking, bursting with big ideas, rare, paradigm-shattering, and IMPARTIAL endorsement.

    ReplyDelete

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