Daniel Pink: Motivation

Daniel Pink speaking at TED

 Pink starts off his TED talk with a story about his adventures in law school. He uses humor and tells the audience about his failures and his motivations. This leads him to his actual talk with the "candle problem." This experiment was then pushed to where the fastest group received money. Another group was told to solve it but was not offered any money. The group given money took 3.5 times longer to solve the problem. Why is this? If this fact has been proved, then why do companies still offer rewards and many other motivations? I think that companies feel they can prove this wrong. This experiment does not apply to everyone; however, it does apply to the majority of people. Some companies want to get more employees and feel that offering a larger amount of money is a faster way to do this. However, this can not be the only reason that motivations work or do not work. I think that there is more the experiment than meets the eye. While researching motivations I discovered Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. These are the steps towards motivations of workers. According to these steps, employees have safety, physiological, and social needs as well as ego and self-actualization. Money might limit motivations, but there is more to the experiment than meets the eye. Daniel Pink makes excellent points; however, not all of them are supported.