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In my TED feed, Dan Pink's 2009 talk on "The puzzle of motivation" showed up today, making the case of how intrinsic motivation (feeling that you are part of something important, that you care for) is so much more powerful than extrinsic motivation (cash rewards for success, punishment for lack of it) in encouraging high performance in business. It reminded me of the talk that Li Bennich-Björkman gave at the first TEDxUniversityOfLuxembourg that I initiated in 2018, where she demonstrates how critically important intrinsic freedom is to scientific success and progress, and how academic freedom is the only warranty for allowing such intrinsic motivation, while top-down control is the worst that can happen to science. Sadly, universities across the globe (I learnt about a rather horrible development at Murdoch University in Australia just before Christmas) are pushed in the opposite direction, towards more top-down control, less academic freedom, and a stubborn belief—sometimes even among university professors—that external incentives will give better science. I realized that the combination of Li's and Dan's talks becomes exceptionally powerful, as they show so well how human creativity, whether in business or in academia or elsewhere, is empowered by intrinsic motivation and freedom to choose the problem to focus on. Dan presents this idea as something new, whereas Li shows that it was first formulated by Wilhelm von Humoldt in 1810, laying the ground for the success of US universities, but it is increasingly being forgotten. Li also points out that the root of today's problems in academia (and many other areas) is the notion of "New Public Management" that academia should be run as a company, and this is why Dan's talk is so interesting in connection: he says that companies should be run like academia!! They both land on the conclusion that because human creatitivity is the root of human progress, ensuring that the freedom to develop intrinsic motivation exists is something we all should care about, in business, in art, at universities, in schools; everywhere. I strongly encourage you to watch the talks, starting with Li's (which is less polished than Dan's, but content- and style-wise, I think it is the better one) and then follow with Dan's.
As a typical city resident, I didn't find time to read this article until the holiday time. It's an important reminder: https://ideas.ted.com/can-trees-heal-people/
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