Cause - Daniel Pink "What matters is the desire to do things because they matter"

David Rendall has a great post about Daniel Pink. In his TED talk, Pink explains: "If we really want to get out of this economic mess... the solution is not to do more of the wrong thing, to entice people with a sweeter carrot or threaten them with a sharper stick.... What matters is the desire to do things because they matter, we like it, it is interesting and we are part of something important. In my mind that new operating system for a business 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 urning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves." Dan compares the development of the encyclopedia by Microsoft Encarta vs. Wikipedia. Encarta was well managed and compensated. Wikipedia does not pay authors, it is free and anyone can edit it. From a traditional economics model, it would seem that Encarta would win, the well paid contributors would produce the best articles, and anything free from Wikipedia would be poor quality. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles built by communities in dozens of languages. I agree with Dan. People work best when they have a passionate cause.