Dan Pink提出了这样一个疑问？在企业、商业各处被广泛运用的激励原则真的有效吗？

有这么一个经典实验，实验者一根蜡烛，一盒子钉子还有一些火柴，任务是要把蜡烛固定在墙上，而蜡油不能滴在桌子上。（这个实验有一定的挑战性，大家请看视频。）一位学者Sam Glucksber把这个实验用于研究激励的力量，他把参加实验者分成两组，对其中的一组宣布：我要为你们计时，好统计一下解决这个问题的平均时间；对另外一组说：我要为每个人计时，如果在前25%的人将获得5美元，最快的那个人将获得20美元。实验的结果是什么？第二组，比第一组人平均要多用三分半钟的时间才能完成任务。为什么呢？为什么人们在奖励之下反而完成任务的速度会变慢呢？

而当把实验物品做了简单的变化之后，实验结果颠倒过来了，这又是为什么呢？

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相信朋友们在看完本篇TED后都会有所思考。我在想的是，虽然Dan讨论的是企业，但是对学校、对孩子来说是不是也是这样呢？考试成绩的排名，以及所有的胡萝卜加大棒的方法，真的能激励孩子吗？还是会类似于Dan在演讲中展示的那样——消磨孩子学习的积极性，限制孩子的创造力？这是需要我们深思的问题。

You've got an incentive designed to sharpen thinking and accelerate creativity, and it does just the opposite. It dulls thinking and blocks creativity.

What's alarming here is that our business operating system --think of the set of assumptions and protocols beneath our businesses, how we motivate people, how we apply our human resources --it's built entirely around these extrinsic motivators, around carrots and sticks. That's actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks. But for 21st century tasks, that mechanistic, reward-and-punishment approach doesn't work, often doesn't work, and often does harm.

Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus, concentrate the mind; that's why they work in so many cases. And so, for tasks like this ,a narrow focus, where you just see the goal right there, zoom straight ahead to it, they work really well. But for the real candle problem, you don't want to be looking like this. The solution is not over here. The solution is on the periphery .You want to be looking around. That reward actually narrows our focus and restricts our possibility.

Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, because they're interesting, because they are part of something important. And to my mind, that new operating system for our businesses revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery: the desire 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. These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

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