Edward Deci stated, "Human beings have an inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend and expand their capacities, to explore, and to learn." Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, utilizes Deci argument as the basis for his theory of motivation in humans as it applies to business and education. For my purpose, however, I want to look at the dynamics of the ever changing motivational tendencies for us, humans.
In Drive, Pink makes a comparison between Microsoft's profit driven encyclopedia , MSN Encarta, and the online free encyclopedia version, Wikipedia. After just nine years, Wikipedia had put MSN Encarta out of business and was the largest most popular encyclopedia in the World. Why did Wikipedia succeed where Microsoft the largest most powerful software company in the world could not? Because someone had a great idea to develop a website that allowed tens of thousands of people to write and edit articles for fun. What is amazing about Wikipedia is that all the work being accomplished along with the website is free for all to read and explore. Wikipedia took advantage of peoples self motivation and allowed them to accomplish great things within the website. No one was managed or given a deadline on what or how to write the information within the articles. No one sits around Wikipedia Headquarters trying to figure out how to motivate its free employees. Pink touts Wikipedia's success as the model system in which self motivation out performs all other business examples.
Recently, I read an article that describes Wikipedia's slow decline. (http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/14301/wikipedia%E2%80%99s-decline-and-the-7-types-of-human-motivation/) The article by Niel Robertson, offers many hypothesis to Wikipedia's downfall. However, he focuses on one main reason why Wikipedia is suffering from what other mass collaboration (crowdsourcing) companies are learning to take advantage of: humans have different motivation systems and you have to cater to all of them.
Just because a person has reached self actualization does not mean they will always stay at that level. Eventually other forms of motivation will need to be brought into the picture in order for people to continue to perform. Humans are not robots once interest is lost in something new a plateau will be reached within ourselves as well as within any organization. It is up to the individual or organization to continually reinvent them self or itself.
The following is an awesome video of Daniel Pink explaining his motivational theory:
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