What is the secret to high performance & satisfaction in today’s world?

Is it the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves (not just in business) and the world?

Daniel Pink in his bestseller (Drive) opens with a great analogy:

Imagine it’s 1995. You sit down with an expert in economics. You say. “I’ve got special powers. I can peer 15 years into the future, and I’d like to test your forecasting powers.”

The expert doesn’t believe you but allows you to continue anyway.

You say. “I’m going to describe 2 new encyclopedias. 1 is just out & the other will be launched in a few years. You have to predict which will be more successful by 2010.”

“Bring in on.” Exclaims the economics expert.

You begin. “The 1st encyclopedia comes from Microsoft. Who are a large & profitable company, and only ever likely to get larger and more profitable.”

“Microsoft will fund this encyclopedia. It will pay professional writers and editors to craft articles on thousands of topics.”

“With well compensated mangers overseeing the project to make sure it gets completed on time and in budget.”

“Microsoft will then sell this encyclopedia, first on CD ROM & later online.”

You continue. “The 2nd encyclopedia won’t be built by a company. It will be created by 10’s of thousands of people who write and edit articles for fun.”

“These people won’t need any special qualifications to participate, and no one will be a paid a penny to write the articles.”

“These people will have to contribute their labour (sometimes 20 or 30 hours a week) for free.”

“The encyclopedia itself, will exist online, will also be free. Meaning no charge for anyone who wants to use it.”

“Now” you say to the economist “fast forward 15 years.”

“One of these encyclopedias will be the largest & the most popular in the world, and the other will be defunct. Which is which?”

The economist could only choose the most logical nailed on result.

Although, you know different, don’t you?

On October 31st, 2009 Microsoft pulled the plug on MSN Encarta, it’s disc & online encyclopedia, which had been on the market for 16 years.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia had more than 13 million articles in some 260 languages.

Furthermore, Wikipedia has grown to 54 million articles in 312 languages today.

The crazy thing is, you’ll only now find detailed information about MSN Encarta as an artcle on Wikipedia.

What happened. The conventional view of human motivation has a hard time explaining this result.

Could Daniel Pink be right?