There is another downside. As people yearn for more status symbols they have less time or inclination for helping others. This, the authors argue, damages “community and trust”, which are vital to an economy because they ensure the smooth running of society. They conclude: “Conspicuous consumption can have an impact not only on people’s well-being but also on the growth prospects of the economy.” The theory may go some way to explaining the public backlash against the louche lifestyles of the UK’s footballers, bankers and politicians.

So, to counter those harmful aspects, organizations such as Ethical Consumer have put their mission to offer alternatives.

As far as my contribution, perhaps looking slightly at a bigger picture, I will outline in this post, 7 consumptions sins: seven things you don’t really need. Yes, really. No, you don’t need any of those.

With no particular order:

1. Branded Clothes – From Naomi Klein‘s ”No Logo”, to stores that sell unbranded clothes, this phenomenon is not new. You want to belong, and be unique, so you buy your jeans at Levi’s or Diesel, and feel you achieve this balance. You should know better and perhaps  join the scouts, and likely learn more about sharing, teamwork, togetherness, and being part of something bigger than you; while still having lots of fun in the meantime. So have clothes you like and can afford, and I did not even start to mention they will often be more comfortable. Let’s get back on track -
2. Latest and Greatest (aka Gadgets) – If you are one of those people with iPad  considering an upgrade to iPad 2, this is a must read for you. You may ponder on this – coming form a Technology guy or at least one pretending to be such, it may initially sound shocking. In fact, it shouldn’t. I know that from any 10 new ideas I have, 8 tend to be on the rubbish side, 1 is OKish, and one may be worthwhile (I flattered myself, I know). Your percentile may vary, but you get the idea. Sometimes to get to the quality, you need to keep the flow of quantity running. When I did copyrighting school, the most important lesson for me was the association game: throw more and more ideas into the room, zoom in and out, play with them preferably with a team, gather the ones that best fit the brief, make it happen. Sometimes combine few, sometimes you will inspire others, or be inspired by others. The floor will be full of walked on garbage ideas. So, what is that all nostalgia reminiscence? Maybe, instead of throwing the shitty gadgets you are bound to be buying acquiring all those latests, don’t get them to begin with! You can always get later the ones that stick around, that really make an impact on your life, that make a difference to your relationships, to people that matter to you. Use the passing time to your advantage and get proportion. Indeed, you may want to be first, so you can have those bragging rights. Alas my friend, bragging is another thing you don’t really need…
3. Bragging Rights (and Show Off in general) – Whenever you need something external to make you feel good about yourself, halt. You are doing something wrong. This may be the part of your Ego that is not helping you. You give one of your best assets, the control on your happiness and well being, to something you do not control. It’s often a big mistake. It will lead you to reliance upon that external substance. Something that can be taken away from you. Replace it with inner strength. Easier said than done, I agree. But a good clue is to avoid any bragging, any show off, any status symbols, anything that smells “I’m better because I have it and you don’t”. You are very important because you mean a lot to the few people that care about you. Nothing else. And while we are on external substances…
4. Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes and other addictions – Unless your name is Jane, those are a no no. They take away your second vital asset: short span of time you were given by mighty ____ (feel up based on your religion or beliefs). Some even take your free will so in the name of freedom you willingly take yours away, dominate your thoughts (e.g. getting more of the substance) and replace your needs with new illusions of perceived needs. Do you really want perceived needs when you already have real ones? RIP Amy.
5. Gambling – A close relative of above, as a common addiction – but with a slight addition to being evil and destructive: it is mathematically proven wrong doing, manipulating lots of hard earn cash to make profits for those that already have too much sins commited. It is sponsoring criminals and Mafia. Who else needs a Wonga.com paying 4200% interest for 400 GBP (max) for a month, if not a mind-stolen gambling junkie? Evil services from the dark side, even Darth Vader would fear.
   
6. Guilt & Greed – “What’chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”. Well, slightly beyond the scope for this post, we sometimes carry those emotional feelings, in as much as we carry fear, lack of confidence, envy – to name just a few. To a certain extent all of those are not needed, but they do serve as some kind of a warning sign, and in moderation can turn the wheel in your favour and have positive outcomes. Fear can direct you away from trouble, and envy can perhaps give you motivation for initiative. Even guilt, a voice from your conscious, or greed, an act of ambition, can sometimes drive you to the right track. The reason I chose carefully guilt and greed, is because they have a dimension directly linked to buying things. Guilt often causes you to compensate. And compensation is not as pure, and as fitting, as the original causality. Buying excessive toys to kids because you do not spend any time with them, is an example of the former. Greed is the fundamental drive causing you to need things you do not need. So eliminating one bird, will cause the whole tree to fall. Or something like that. I’m pretty sure there was another bird somewhere, originally. But we don’t need it either.
7. Big Weddings – Something that is almost a plague in my homeland. And I do not mean,  to those that can afford it. It is those couples that struggle to have or rent a home, do not get a lot of help from their parents, their current work income is hardly sufficient to their basic needs, yet they spend a fortune inviting 600-800 people some of which they hardly know, with expensive catering, bar (in my country it is usually free for the guests – here in UK that is almost suicidal…), exquisite scenery and location, music, dresses and cloth, flowers and décor, invitations, party theme, lavish car to pick the newly wed, a top photographer… it is endless. In the name of “our life are going to be tough so at least we make one day perfect”, the young couple throws themselves down many a steps in the ladder, they will than need few years just to get back to where they were. Extremely short term satisfaction never lasts  (if at all, many a times it is another case of bragging, hiding the real situation, or pseudo-satisfaction meaning external show off rather than a real intrinsic one). I’m all for experiences in general, and they prove to be more valuable to ones long term mental health than consuming things, but this is more about consuming artificial commodities in the experience.  You can make a lifelong shining experience, by focusing on the things you do need in your wedding: relations, friends, party atmosphere, fun. Everything can be reconsidered to fit your budget and needs, helping you to start your life as a couple on a positive note (and positive balance). Your real friends will want this for you as well.
8. Bonus – Too long posts by people that tell you what you need and what you don’t need – they make me sick. In fact, I’m sick. I wonder why.

So, should we fire all our guns on the first round?

Quite often, one has to present himself to others; whether in a date, conference, job interview or party: you are expected to share something about yourself.

Depending on the circumstances, you may have plenty or no time at all. Equally, depending on your confidence, past accomplishments, and general character,  it may be easy or difficult for you, to to fill that time with self praising.

Pushing it slightly, are those two approaches:

• Type 1 – Those that speak in details about everything they have done, mentioning every trophy, accolade, and award from kindergarden to current times, dropping names as they go by, and essentially bombarding with “look at me and what I have done”.
• Type 2 – The other side of the spectrum, almost shying away from anything that can be considered vanity, and when cornered to say something on their achievements, they attribute it to their teams and peers, environment, or pure luck.

This seems to suggest that the formers – are the successful people, and the latter ones – failures. Is that so?
Before I try to answer this, let’s move through time forward, and foresee a possible 7th meeting with that same person, way past the initial acquaintance and into some form of more established relationships: friend, colleague, peer or such. The situation now is different, and often calls for different conversation type:

• Balance – sharing comes from both sides, one has to blend speaking with listening.
• Steam  - did you stretched and tell everything on your first meetings, forced now to share dust bits as you are running out of steam; or do you still have plenty of gems, you did not fully reveal on the initial instances, perhaps until developing some trust?
• Trait – perhaps indeed the one with all the stories, can back it up time and time again with more of those, truly being a good story teller and over achiever; and the silent lamb has indeed nothing but “Baaaah Baaaah” (or “Meeeeh Meeeeh”, depending on your culture) beneath his sleeves.

Obviously, a 7th meeting will be a telltale. But having no such luxury, we are back to the first meeting, so here is my simple rules or formula to resolve it, that you can refine to meet your experiences:

1. Assume all people are type 1 or 2, so there is nothing in the middle.
2. Assume type 1 “real” achievements are 50% of what they tell you (e.g. divide by 2), where type 2 ones are actually doubled to 200% (e.g. multiply by 2)

That’s all – these are the views you ate forecasted to have on that 7th meeting.
The logic behind the first rule, is that often in such first meetings, the tension of the circumstances accentuate natural character traits, so even if you are just slightly leaning towards one side, it will exponentially multiply. So by simply taking this all the way, you get at a  reasonable assumption, plus the triviality of those rules is easy to follow.
The reasoning for the second rule, is that it is still possible for modest people to just have nothing, and vane people to have it all – you just need to modify their own “perceived” value, typically bloated for type 1, and “shrunk” for type 2, to the reality.

To make it bold, I’ve decided to make a full meal:

• Lamb Curry
• Naan Bread
• Steamed Rice
• Poppadoms – From Sainsbury…

They say the taste of beer, is an acquired one. I guess there is something in it. Beer (especially lukewarm lagers), taste when you sip them inside  your body, roughly like it does on the other way around. But cold beer – now, for something completely different.

Living in UK, it is possibly mandatory to love beers. Well, if you do not love things you do almost every day – it may lead to terrible frustration. So better love it said Confucius ages ago (my take off).

They even got beer festivals here in UK: you buy an empty glass (sounds foolish – doesn’t it? wait and see) and then basically taste all the presenters new beers (and some old ones) until you are not thirsty (or more likely, collapse – I tried to stay relatively politically correct).

I had an enjoyable experience in USA as well – I remember a pub in Boston a friend took me to when he studied at MIT, when there were 270 (!!!) kinds of beer at that time, out of which 70 were from barrels. I was only a couple of weeks there and sworn I will taste all of them. I must admit I had failed, but will never tell you by what slim a margin… I believe today there are 350 kinds there, and they aim for 365, so you can drink a different kind every day of the year. From chocolate, to ginger, to berries, to all kind of lagers, pilsners, wheat beers, dark and brown stouts,  ales and real ales and the truly only real ales, from no alcholol to low, mild and extremely strong. Open your mind, and then your throat.

But strangely enough, the most memorable  beer experience I ever had was back in my home country. No huge beer tradition there, but my best memory so far. I was a teenager. I used to play Tennis with a friend I will call Petrus and our gang of geeks with no girlfriends and lots of energy on Friday nights. He had a private course at his amazing home (his house used to belong to one of Israel best Tennis players, Amos Mansdorf, who of course had to have a course ) – A full qualified doubles one. We played for hours, mostly in couples format which I adored (later pursuing playing Bridge for the national youth team for the same bonding experiences – and what do you know: even got married for probably the same reasons), usually with multiple small foolish bets.  Bets were everything those days. Amongst our group there were better athletes than me, also much better build people, but I did OK. You shan’t be worried.

This all leads to the best beer experience I have had, which is sifting a beer from a nearside course cabin, who had mainly a fridge full of beers. The main house (perhaps a hundred yards further) had beers as well, but it’s those nearby cabin fridge beers my memory delves on. So after a  few hours of play, an ice cold Goldstar beer or  some imported ones, I don’t recall properly, were our prize. There was nothing like it. Your body eagered every drop, in a passion I had only found later with the other gender. A truly remarkable taste. Acquired or not, I did not give a damn. I even became a barman for few month later on while doing my duties to the country, cherishing those exact moments, only to discover that barmen do not drink at work. Such a shame.

Since than I had drunk hundreds of different kinds, in plenty of countries, with many a friend. But nothing equals Saint Petrus’s beer after a series of Tennis matches. Win or lose – we all won every Friday.

—

With love to Petrus and the Gang.

Last year in MWC 2010, LTE seemed to be the main theme. What was the theme of this week MWC 2011?

Well it’s not quite easy to figure it out:

• Android O/S – Undoubtfully  the most buzzing area of the show, becoming the dominant O/S in spite of Nokia and Microsoft huge announcement on Windows Phone 7; but it was after all, a small part of the overall event, although probably the most likely candidate theme to remain lasting for MWC 2011
• Tablets – RIM Playbook, HTC Flyer, HP TouchPad, Samsung Galaxy 10.1, Intel MeeGo, LG Optimus as well as Motorola Xoom and others previously announced tablets in CES on January 2011; a big iPad “follow-me” movement that started back in 2010 that mainly signify the solidification of the trend
• Apps – GSMA WAC, as well as vendors announcing their own WAC based application store like Smart in the Philippines by Huawei; but we got used to apps by now and it is not really new
• Processors – Snapdragon or OMAP 5? Qualcomm and Ti surely care; but who else does?
• Specialty Phones
  • 3D – Following the television 3D trend of yester-year, LG has shown a 3D mobile phone (Optimus Black): glasses-less, ability to record in 3D, and even a deal with YouTube to upload 3D videos; it is still early bird, and it has to be proven that this content is really desired and commercially viable to end users, it seems more of a differentiation feature at this stage
  • Playstation Phone – Sony Xperia looks like a cool PSP phone; probably will be adapted by some of the gamers but still a niche
  • NFC – In Samsung’s Galaxy S II, to be followed with others; but is it really the year NFC will start to be truly global and not mainly a Japanese / APAC phenomenon?
• 4G – LTE is of course still a major trend, and it starts to get early deployments; probably a long lasting trend that will progress in 2011 and forward

My pick (literally, thousands of sticker pins were attached to dignify suite wearers) has to be Android, if only to the lack of participation of Apple even when they won the 2010 Phone awards with iPhone4 but decided not to show up to pick it (BTW, sincere health regards to Steve Jobs).

You need to pick up pepper that match in shape and allow you to cook such a recursive dish.

Essentially a stuffed pepper, with an inner stuffed pepper… Depending on your stack size (silly inside joke) you can try to put a smaller chilli pepper inside, and yet even a smaller birds eye pepper inside to make it even geekier.

Below recipe has two levels, and does not specify exact quantities as they pertain the count and size of pepper you are using.

Bon a petite!

Ingredients:

• Large peppers (e.g. bell pepper) – You can use other shaped ones (like the long ones)
• Smaller Peppers – Match the shape to fit within the bigger ones
• Optional: Even smaller peppers (I used diced birds eye)
• External stuffing : rice, oil and water
• Internal stuffing:  minced meat, onions, carrots,  tomatoes, celery, garlic, thyme, olive oil, red wine, bay leaf
• Roasted pine nuts
• Tomato
• Salt and pepper

Preperation:

• Make the inner pepper filling – I’ve done a Bolognese alike sauce, using the ingredients above – slightly sweating the onion in the pan in some oil, then adding the carrots, tomatoes and celery, and then adding the meat, wine and spices
• Preheat oven to medium-high (~200 C)
• Make the outer pepper filling – I’ve done plain white rice
• Roast some pine nuts, walnuts or both on a pan for a short while – make them slightly coloured and smoky but not overdo it
• Note: You can mix the fillings, or keep them separated – and can mix the nuts as well. You can also make any other baked fillings
• Now for the stuffing – cut the inner pepper head (figuratively, it does not normally hurt but what do I know), clean the seeds and white thingies, clean the head – and fill it with the meaty sauce. I added also some diced birdseyes. You can put the head back.
• Cut the outer pepper head, clean it and the head, add some rice and roasted nuts, then fit the smaller pepper inside, with more of the rice and nuts mixture.
• Put a slice of tomato on the top then close with the head.
• Bake for an hour or so.
• Serve hot.

One particular favorite soup & stew was Goulash soup. As a carnivore, meat in my plate is always in demand. And hot spicy food became a passion after abandoning my adolescence rebellion against the hot Yemenis’ Schug my father ate with everything (and still does) adequately getting reputation of Eastern/Arabic Jew with his dark skin (from years on the sea) and his passion for that red green boiling hot substance. Refusing to adhere, as was my trademark, I avoided hot food for long. But Goulash was a love affair. Some swear my arms got bigger from no less than 25 turns of that Pepper Mill knob on every Salad I eat. Well, swearing is not polite anyhow.

My probably first consistent acquaintance with this Soup, was following Maccabbi Tel-Aviv basketballs games in Yad Eliyahu, stopping at Mifgash-Ayalon after their victory (at that time, every Maccabbi Tel-Aviv European Cup or otherwise game in Yad Eliyahu was a victory), and taking meaty Goulash Soup before my main (you guessed right: grilled meat skewers as well).

Then I learned to make my own Goulash Soup, keeping honest to the traditional recipe, making sure the Paprika is not burnt, but still adding my own signature (lately in UK it has become Parsnip – god forbid), I was imprisoned in my own vanity – truly believing I have The Goulash within my palms and taste buds.

As I had an Hungarian Ex for while, and had some chances to taste the real thing, even with those almost magical-to-whisper Nokedli Hungarian Soup Noodles companions, with shapes as diverse as one liners aimed at Tourist Girls on Tel Aviv beach, so I had some confidence in my own creation, doing the sin of comparison. And sins are there to be avenged.

So I guess HR all mighty decided to pay back today, in Hungarian Budapest, on the Buda castle side to be accurate, in a seemingly unassuming way. Quite late after a Conference day, on a rainy day, I found myself strolling to a nearby-to-hotel little place, with those pleasant white table cloth, and severe looking middle aged well eating waiters. Can’t go wrong. I had the invisible Paul Auster with me, introduced to me by the above Ex long ago. Very fitting, as like Goulash, he keeps a mysterious taste, but with a good old comfortable exactly-the-same feel. And Goulash Soup it was. In Rome, be a Romanian as they say in Asfur.

Blimey. As a Britton-to-be I must admit this was a Proper Goulash. First it was served in a traditional metal cauldron called Bogracs, Harry Potter style. It had all the needed ingredients, but not more. A hearty, rustic dish. As should be. With those alien lookalike Nokedli friends. Served with fresh from the oven chunky pieces of white bread. When on a rainy cold evening, your forehead seems to get just a glimpse of tiny little sweat spots of hot pleasure you know you have Heaven on Earth.

God bless all mighty.

But the main amazement was a little side pot with a condensed Peppery / Paprika Goulash extract on the side. This is innovation at the highest scale. After years of trickery methods and trials and errors, between my beloved spouse and myself how to make food that will be spicy for me, but still blend for her, and failing to find resolution – I found god in this little place: I could just add as much of this extract, meld it to the soup (and after all it was of similar disposition so blended easly) without distorting the Soup, and be able to control the Spice I like in my Girls. Genious.

We have tried all sorts before. Big pan / small pan sauce, where the main dish is basked in the big pot, and at the end spices are added to a small portion in the little pan. Works OK, but demands good guessing of quantities each of us would actually want to have. Not as easy as one would reckon, when you have a Morag as your spouse. Marking with a line of garnish (e.g. some peppers, or otherwise) when we share an Oven dish, Pizza, Pie, or toasts – making sure the marks are not lost in translation, making me feel I’m eating foodless food, and making Morag natural eye color turn to sun-setting colors of red / orange and purple, if we make a mistake and eat the wrong portions.

For that reason, I’m out. Sorry Dragons, I meant I’ve finished my Soup to its atomic bits and bobs. And as my young Tom emits after getting her M’n’M sweet post a successful potty training:  Another one tomorrow.

PS

I can only add the aftermath picture. Mainly because I was too starving to take a picture at the beginning, but also to avoid any drooling from you on the PC screens in front of you. Small consideration on my part.

—

We are used to “prepaid” mobile phone accounts, where it’s easy to control costs. But this service is often offered by a particular carrier to meet the carrier own services.

A possible extension, is a global PrePay. This service can be tied to a user or even multiple users, rather than the user and it’s service provider. While still not a mobile payments or mWallet, it allows a user, family or a small business, to control costs and allocate monthly (or otherwise) money for various mobile communication expenses together, or even control each seperately (e.g. different pool for SMS, voice calls, internet, and roaming):

• A registry is created for families phones across multiple carriers, or a small business phones, or even a single person using multiple phones from possibly multiple carriers.
• A prepaid services is offered, where unlike the carrier provided one – it is “shared” across carriers.
• In addition it may even be provisioned to be shared across multiple users, e.g. the business partners, family members, etc.
• The prepaid amount may be further allocated to different applications  (e.g. pool for SMS, pool for voice, pool for app download – or globally shared)
• When one of the eligible users deposit – all can benefit.
• When one consumes, overall balance is reduced
• Policies can further refine this to multiple needs, domains and solutions

Note:  Direct integration to carrier prepaid solution as well as OTT are both feasible.

Some trivial use cases are:

• Setting mobile phone pre-pay allowance for a family.
• Setting media consumptions for multiple family members (one may use for iTunes music, other for android apps)
• Small business communication costs control

This is primarily a consumer service, but can be linked with service providers, or target Enterprises of a small scale.

I also appreciate  parents and family,  neighborhood, peer groups, social-demographics, and other factors play a vital role. But I want to focus on the subjects I believe should be taught at schools prior to college / university level.

Some of those are visited occasionally, but not deeply enough. Some are pretty trivial to implement. Some are better suited for tuition in a class environment, and some are less. Overall these are life skills – that everyone should have in the 21 century. I know some of the more lucky ones amongst us may seek private tuitions, and some may look at this as yet another paternalistic agenda setting; and that’s OK.

The aim is to cover subjects that (a) can be taught in schools (b) do not demand exaggerated resources, (c) but do demand some so they benefit those that study at school and may not otherwise have the opportunity, and (d) are beneficial to those that learn it.

What about the grades? WTF is my answer to that.

Here are my top 10 , aimed mainly at the 14-18 bracket, representing the things I would have liked to learn earlier, and would be glad if my kids learn it as well:

1. Communication - Listening, being emphatic,  anger management,  rephrasing when not understood,  handling conflicts – situations and scenarios, as part of drama classes, as group sessions – I don’t care. To everyone, not only arty farty ones.
2. Personal Finance – Credit card management, meaning of loans and interest, mortgage handling, value of saving, basic markets (currencies, stocks, bonds). I would go beyond that to advanced class in 17-18.
3. Massage - And other ways to touch and physically pleasure others
4. Computer and Internet Skills – Search, E-Mail, (Free) Office, Media Editing, even eBay – Especially to those deprived of home chances (and yes I know many know it but they do not represent all  equally)
5. Blind Typewriting - Separate from above as it is virtually essential for any job nowadays
6. Consumerism - Price comparison, understanding the intent of commercials, understanding what brands want to do to you to allow you to choose if you want to pay premium to “belong”, logical purchase (Nobel prize winner Kahneman showed people are willing to drive 15 min to buy a pen that cost 10$ elsewhere instead of 25$, but will rarely do the same when facing similar decision buying a suit costing 1000$ when there is 15 min alternative for 985$)
7. Well-being and Ergonomics – I mean standing correctly, sitting, walking classes (can be merged to Sports) up to Ti-Chi and meditation
8. Organisation - Time management, basic task and project management, prioritization, delegation, pros and cons
9. Creativity - Yes to all, many studies shows it can be taught, and there are plenty of tools, games, exercises and techniques to teach and have fun
10. Philosophy - A Must in my humble opinion, best tool to allow us to choose how to lead our lives.

Beyond this bracket, I would add:

• Languages (two in addition to mother tongue, ages 6-12)  when the human brain is most susceptible to learning this
• Love Making (college / university) – I know there are sex classes in schools, who are notorious in being useless. I aim for courtship, understanding the other gender / partner needs, various forms of the art of sexually pleasing your partner
• Parenthood (in university level or separated) – For everyone: responsibilities, basic handling of a child and its needs, how 2 become 3 changes quite a lot.

Lastly, I would emphasize cooking, movie and music, theater, museums and exhibitions, culture, camping and hitchhiking – as mostly done (but reduced due to budget going to the places it shouldn’t go).

Feel free if you have more subjects, that you personally:

• Happy if someone would teach that to you that, or
• Want your children to learn it

Dan started with the Candle experiment, showing how monetary incentive may indeed narrow the focus and hence achieve better results for some simple missions but fails on tougher ones (such as avoiding functional fixingness of the box in the candles problem demanding some creativity and… in-to-the-box thinking). This was further explored in an MIT students series of tasks, where money helped on the physical or mechanical tasks but failed to deliver on any “rudimentary cognitive” tasks. Dan argues “if-then” rewards are ill suited for creative tasks.

Dan then referred to Israel childcare fees for parents that come late, and showed again how it fails to achieve the desire results: removing the guilt and making being late an economical transaction that some parents had bargained for, and even having some damaging long term effects by creating a new behavior patterns (those being late, maintained this behavior after shedding those guilt feelings).

Simply controlling humans with “button alike” incentives seems not to always work – even if traditional wisdom is that it should. Surely some parts of our drive are biological, and based on punishments and rewards. However Dan offered three additional layers he demonstrated as highly motivational – he called them intrinsic motivators (to replace the extrinsic ones):

• Autonomy – In time, tasks given, technique and team selection
• Mastery – We naturally want to get better at things
• Purpose – We achieve much more when we have associated meaning to the results

Dan followed with some concrete evidence. Some of the samples are well known (Google 20% do-whatever-you-want-we-keep-IP) but some were illuminating (call center without call recording, timing and monitoring becoming one of the most efficient ones…). Very good challenge to management “wish to control” and “fear of losing it” while strangling innovation in the process.

10 years ago, a well funded and incentivized encyclopedia (Encarta by Microsoft), got professional experts and managers, and pays them to write an online expert entries. On the other side, wikipedia was done for fun, without any monetary rewards. No (sober) economist could predict which of those would prevail…

Dan addressed another interesting related point: wouldn’t we do nothing if not “managed” – depicting the lazy and inept devil within us? Well he argued we are active and engaged (like any 2 years would demonstrate) so adopting an autonomic environment, with clear purpose guidelines would nurture our habits to become better to work for ourselves (and that management).

Dan believed management in its “full control” manifestation is a legacy 18^th century technology we invented to enforce others doing what we want, which is nowadays obsolete.

Dan also objected only monetary incentives – they may be useful as a form of recognition, but not as sole motivation tool.

I also liked his sports/arts analogy for feedbacks – where annual (or bi-annual) feedbacks for a professional seems ridiculous, and semi automatic text is often given instead of a reoccurring personal feedback  and personal.

I have special interest in his views, as they seem to repeat findings we had previously forming an Innovation Program. It was based it on 4 pillars manifested in tools and procedures for – ideation and knowledge creation, idea collaboration and sharing, immediate feedbacks, and rewards and recognition. We have found similar things – people wanted more autonomy to deliver their ideas, and we did experience the challanges of losing control and faced some natural reluctancy to move forward even for a moderate 8% do-something-new (one short afternoon a week) for a subset of the groups.

Dan immediately caught my ear when he argues that people want to contribute in something bigger than themselves, as I use the following in my CV for ages now: “I seek to share my technological leadership within a superb team, reaching broader realms than my own humble shoulders can carry, or the head upon them can dream of.”

• TED video
• RSAnimation (thanks Aviv S)
• Dan Pink’s blog: http://www.danpink.com/archives/2010/03/is-purpose-really-an-effective-motivator