The key ingredients of a Type I driven intrinsically motivated approach to stimulate creativity and innovation in the modern day of the knowledge worker are as follows:
Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive
By Twenty percent of time on Training Wheels , Daniel Pink in his book Drive means that companies like Google , Atlassian in the modern age of innovation and creativity encourage their employees to devote 20% of their total time to do something of their own in order to create a shippable product.
This is the result because of which Google gave birth to Gmail and Google News and is regarded as a pre-requisite in the modern age of Motivation 3.0 where autonomy is a key ingredient to nurture mastery in modern day knowledge workers.
Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive
Type I behavior or Intrinsically motivated behavior is about long term Oxytocin driven fulfillment.
People who are intrinsically motivated think beyond short term addictive rewards , beyond the addictive shot of DOPAMINE to think about long term benefits to derive fulfillment.
Hence as opposed to extrinsic motivation , Type I behavior based on intrinsic motivation is about long term and hence relates to greater physical and mental well being as against depression and anxiety so common when motivation is due to extrinsic rewards
Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive
Motivation 2.0 a term coined by Daniel Pink in his book Drive is another name for Carrot and Stick or Reward/Punish way of motivating people to get results when the work is dreary , boring and mundane.
Since in the modern day of creative and innovative work we need to move towards intrinsic motivation as the basis for motivational techniques for e.g. Motivation 3.0 hence Daniel Pink provides the following 3 options to be incorporated in any mundane work to get results while still being focused on Motivation 3.0 related principles.
These 3 options to make routine bound work interesting are:
Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive
The Carrot and Stick method of motivation to stimulate desired behavior from individuals focuses on EXTRINSIC rewards to stimulate desired behavior.
Rewards in such a case act as an addictive agent and activates reward seeking addictive behavior in individuals.The expectation of reward stimulates nucleus accumbens and makes us eager to perform the task in the expectation of rewards.This may even come at the cost of unethical behavior , narrow short term focus and other malpractices.
But these rewards are in no means a source of fulfillment since the enjoyment is short lived and makes us long more such rewards.When the rewards are not received it leads to depression and flow of cortisol.
Thus the way forward is intrinsic motivation driven motivation system that focuses on fulfillment as opposed to addictive rewards.
Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive
Casinos surround themselves with reward cues for e.g. inexpensive food , free liquor , surprise gifts , potential jackpot prizes etc. to act as reward cues in order to stimulate the Nucleus Accumbens in the human brain.
The Dopamine or Addictive chemical that flows as a result stimulates risk seeking behavior in human beings to divert them from their risk averse nature.
Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive
fMRI or Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging reveals activation of Nucleus Accumbens and the flow of the “Addictive” chemical named “Dopamine” when extrinsic rewards are provided.
The results are similar to addictive behavior produced as a result of consuming cocaine , alcohol or gambling.
The downside of “rewards” due to addiction reveals an alarming truth that rewards can lead to both “risky choice” and “risk seeking mistakes”.
The addictive feeling due to dopamine delights then dissipates and then demands another dose.This is never a long lasting feeling of fulfillment.
Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive
Let us look at Newton’s first law:
“An object in motion will stay in motion and an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted by an outside force.”
Newtonian physics runs into problem when mass no longer remains constant i.e. at the subatomic level.Down there things get freaky.
Similar let us look at the Motivational mechanism existing in the era of Industrial Revolution.
“Rewarding an activity will get you more of it.
Punishing an activity will get you less of it.”
This motivational technique holds good for mundane , routine bound work but fails for “right brain” oriented created and innovation based work.
Thus like we need to tweak Newton’s laws to cover all scenarios similarly to covering motivational aspects of the modern day we need to move from Motivation 2.0 to 3.0
Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive
Motivation 2.0 or Carrot and Stick Motivational technique suffers from the following drawbacks as a result of which due to emergence of modern day business models , the need is to have a new Motivational technique i.e. Motivation 3.0
Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive
Motivation 2.0 a term coined by Daniel Pink in his book Drive explains the rationale behind the huge success of Carrot and Stick based motivation for doing routine bound mundane work in the age of Industrial Revolution.
Carrot and Stick motivation is another name for IF-THEN rewards where rewards are provided as a bait to produce expected routine bound behavior.
In the modern age of the knowledge worker where there is a lot of emphasis on innovation and creativity IF-THEN awards can absolutely demotivate the knowledge worker and produce detrimental results.
Daniel Pink goes a step further and says that if at all rewards have to be given to stimulate expected innovative and creative behavior the IF-THEN rewards should in turn be changed to NOW-THEN rewards.
Adopted from Daniel Pink’s book Drive