Dr. CK Lin | Productivity. Innovation. Entrepreneur Profiles

Read this if you’d like to increase team creativity, productivity with the 21st century motivation

How many of you work with people? How many of you depend on your people to produce results? How many of you would like to create an environment where people are self-motivated, creative, and results oriented?

When people think about motivation, they think of the most obvious model, the carrot and stick model. This is especially true in north America where capitalism rules. True, people are extrinsically motivated. True, people are tuned into wii.fm–’what’s in it for me’–all the time. And true, business have been using it as a motivation mechanism for hundreds of years.

Dan Pink, author of “A Whole New Mind”, gave an eyeopening presentation on the paradox of incentives and results. he asserts that carrot and stick model works in a narrow scope of problems. and it doesn’t work in most others. especially when the problems requires creativity. in fact not only that it doesn’t work, incentives actually make people perform worse. the higher the incentive and worse people perform.

What? That goes against the idea of capitalism. He had my attention.

He further explains that extrinsic motivators–the carrots and sticks–are good for mechanical problems. Problems that have a defined set of rules, narrow focus, and clear roadmap. An example is streamlining a car manufacturing process in an assembly line.

however if the problem is undefined and qualitative–‘big hairy audacious goal’ as Jim Collins would call it–and the solution is on the periphery, the extrinsically based model would crumble. sweeter carrot and sharper stick would just fail. he says, appealing to the intrinsic motivators–autonomy, mastery, and purpose–would accelerate creativity and thinking. an example is Kennedy’s ‘we choose to go to the moon’ challenge.

A la the world is flat and a whole new mind, if you look around, the traditional white collar jobs are being commoditized. the mechanical, tedious type work is being transferred abroad more and more. The high paying jobs today require you to be more creative, more right brain, and more conceptual.

What kind of candle problem does your company have? Are you motivating your people with extrinsically based strategy or intrinsically based strategy?

If you have the kind of problems that require your people to think outside of the box, Dan pink offers 3 winning characteristics:

1. Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives,
2. Mastery: the desire to do something better and better that matters
3. Purpose: the yearning to do what we do and in service for something larger than ourselves

Examples he gave were:

• Google’s 20% time and how this method birthed the likes of Gmail, Google News, Orkut.
• Wikipedia and how it beat Microsoft’s Encarta.
• ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) where workers are held to account for results. Results only. How they deliver the results is irrelevant. Meetings are optional. The consequence is that productivity goes up and turnover goes down.

In my circle I also have 3 successful examples:

1. Opportunity Green(www.OpportunityGreen.com): Southern California’s premiere sustainability business conference and community. I was fortunate to be one of the people who started it. And in 3 years Mike Flynn and Karen Solomon has grown it from obscurity to the #1 brand in bringing TOP business people and corporations together for sustainable causes. Get this, almost all the people involved are volunteers.
2. Homeless but Not Toothless(http://www.homelessnottoothless.org/): Dr. Jay Grossman’s nonprofit organization that brings dignity back to homeless people through charitable dental work and he is now broadening the mission to foster care children. With the help of Hollywood celebrities and power brokers, HBNT will help thousands more.
3. Internet Advertising and Marketing: Most of the companies are virtual. These self-selected and self-motivated people and organizations the driving force to innovative business models that inspired traditional business to be more open and transparent. See Chris Anderson’s book “FREE” for more examples.

What will you do now? Will you be lazy and use the traditional carrot and stick extrinsic motivators or adapt to the scientifically proven intrinsic motivators? How are you going to motivate your people for your “candle problem”? How will you motivate your family, friends, coworkers, community organizations?

Watch the video and let me know what you will do

Social Media’s Importance In Foreign Affairs

It’s no shocker that Iran’s recent elections have made the headlines of every major news network.

However what IS noteworthy is the role social media is playing in the recent turmoil.

Keeping information and content within your region or country has become literally impossible thanks to the world wide web.

The same holds true for social networking via Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Iranian citizens are able to keep the rest of the world updated in a 140 word blurb on their Twitter, a valuable resource that didn’t use to exist.

This new social media turn is refreshing and innovative, no longer will we question what really IS going on in a protesting country or nation.

This is an unforeseen route that social media has taken, we have always looked at Twitter or other social media sites as vehicles for personal or company gain…now we have opened up a completely different door.

Personally, this is a thrilling turn for us aspiring innovators, because this shows that we have more resources to cause change and connect people than previously considered.

I only hope that this sort of connection does not get abused or misused, it would be naive to rule out any sort of cyberwarfare or attacks against outside governments.

Thus, with admiration and caution, I end this blog entry, and log onto my Twitter to view the latest updates.

Managing Your Social Life via Apps

So you have your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace.

Do you check them all every day?

Are there some sites you end up neglecting?

With the help of social aggregators, you can manage your social life more effectively.

The following aggregators have been designed to do just that:
• Atomkeep: designed to sync all your profile information among multiple social networks.
• Digsby: involves instant messaging, e-mail, and social networks. It integrates social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and LinkedIn with a newsfeed and alerts.
• FriendBinder: Works by adding all your social networks on your FriendBinder profile and all updates appear. You can also update your Twitter and Facebook statuses as well.
• FriendFeed: From Netflix to Twitter, this social network site allows you to receive updates from a large number of sites, and also lets you subscribe to other users’ feeds.
The verdict according to CNET? FriendFeed and FriendBinder are the top two social aggregate picks.

The overall concept is great, manage all your social profiles in one spot, communicate better, etc.

However is it too much? Are social networking aggregators too overwhelming?

Some say yes, others swear by them.

Worst case, manually manage your social profiles, however now there are alternative solutions.

Secret Messages via Infrared Fuses

Researchers have officially created an information-dense fuse that sends a message as it burns.

Made from dots of lithium, rubidium, and cesium laid on a line of fast-burning nitrocellulose, these elements convey a form of chemical Morse code.

Chemist David Walt of Tufts University states that “if somebody is stranded in an unfriendly environment, they may need to communicate without attention-drawing electromagnetic frequencies.”

Check out the article to learn more, see what’s in store for this future innovative tool.

Still Hope for Start-Ups

If you do not get funding for your tech start-up, you will not succeed.

So the legend goes.

But according to a new study from North Carolina State University, shows that if a product is successful, it will in turn secure “sufficient amounts of capital.”

How do you enable this sort of product success?

Dr. David Townsend states that “undercapitalized ventures need to engage in management strategies focused on reducing their costs.”

While management is no doubt an intrical part of any successful company, the study argues that it is not the MOST important aspect of a venture company.

Granted, you do need a team to sell and market your product, your content can be great, but if no one’s there to circulate it, then what?

However perhaps this study has a point. We rely on marketing to sell our product, our content, etc.

But do we rely on marketing too much? Shouldn’t a good product simply sell itself?

This is what the study is arguing in terms of undercapitalized venture start-ups.

But a lot of this seems to hold true in other fields as well.