What motivates us the most

First let me make clear that I am talking about the motivation in workplace. In personal life it's easy - in first half of our life it's the Sex, in second half it's the Comfort. (So to speak with tongue in cheek)

But the workplace motivation is more intriguing. And that is the area that every OR specialist should always keep in the forefront of their mind - the questions and aspects of human motivation. Here's an excellent animated video derived from the talk of one Dan Pink at RSA. Seems that Mr. Pink also excels in self-motivation, since this lecture is a small masterpiece.
True, these research findings are popping up here and there for the last two decades, at least, and lots of companies are adopting some of those principles, however this short video sums it up in excellent concise way. Enjoy!



However, I personally think that all these findings are missing some essential qualifications. I thinks that it reflects the motivation of people in developed countries, where there is no hunger and war is something nobody really remembers.
To echo the words of Mika Waltari in his book Egyptian Sinuhe, where he describes one lucky country he travels through, "...and the people who knew neither hunger no war, were already in middle age...".
I wonder, how the same research would turned out in war torn Angola, or Iraq.
I suspect that this type of "Make the world a better place" altruism grows best in economically nutritious Petri dish - relatively wealthy society. But what do I know about the poor countries. Maybe they would surprise us the most. The world is changing after all. It's the Internet age now.

One observation I made about the phenomenon of people working in their free time for free. (Linux developers, etc.) First I would liken it to simple hobby-ism. And I think that it indeed has the roots in hobbies. Everybody at some time in their life likes to build some "model airplane" and see it fly. But, and here comes my observation, they would like more to see it soar, than just fly. In other words, people don't mind to work for free on somebody's else project (i.e. Linux), but they prefer to jump on winning bandwagon. The likelihood of overall impact (let's even say world wide impact) is a specific motivation on its own.

It's the Internet age now.