Dan Pink offers some insights into what science tells us about when incentives work, and when they don’t. Interesting that this talk was given in 2009, but I don’t think I’ve seen marked improvement in the use of incentives since then. Possibly because to admit that incentives don’t work the way we usually think would require business leaders to not only stop giving them, but to stop receiving them! This also has implications for those of us who teach. How we motivate our students should reflect this reality, as well as the way we schedule our time and motivate good teaching.

(HT: Corey Andreasen)