Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Motivation 3.0

A question that I ask myself periodically is this: Why work on open source projects? In my case, why work on ECF? What is my motivation to do so?

There's an interesting book by Daniel Pink that examines human motivation called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. There's also a nice YouTube video by the author from last year's TED conference.

In reading the first part of the book, I've resonated with his assertion that intrinsic motivation is sometimes stronger than extrinsic motivation...particularly when creativity (aka innovation) is involved. And I suspect I am not alone in this...at least among people who are passionate about innovation, community, software technology, and open systems.

I believe understanding motivations is important...because lots of assumptions about how innovation comes about...i.e. who does it and why...are actually dependent upon underlying assumptions about motivation.

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