Material rewards don’t work the way we’re used to thinking

(Video lost: Dan Pink’s talk on motivation.)

Dan Pink is a good speaker, which is already some­thing, you’ll agree. The main idea: mate­r­ial rewards work well when the job is simple, almost mechanical. Adding even slightly com­plex cog­ni­tive tasks imme­di­ately can­cels out the ben­e­fit of this kind of motivation. Creative work needs other incentives.