I was recently asked the following question by Ilan Mochari, who is a senior writer at Inc Magazine, as a response to my survey on The People Side of Innovation:
“One of the early results of the survey was that financial incentives and bonuses are not as important to the innovation process as the other four ways listed on the survey. Why do you think this is the case?”
This is my reply:
“Having spoken with lots of people over the years on incentives and drivers for innovation, I was not surprised that financial incentives and bonuses rated low. People who get the chance to work with innovation (full-time or part-time) seem to be very happy about their jobs and they are more driven by the passion of what they are doing. They also like intellectual challenges and being able to work with other qualified and competent people in order to reach their goals.
This just drives the financial incentives and bonuses down to a 3rd or 4th place if you rank what motivates such people. Of course, it should be noted that people working with innovation are already fairly or well compensated and as everyone else they also like a good paycheck and bonuses. They are just in a position where it is not the top of their objectives.”
Although, they deal with lots of uncertainty, less than perfect bosses and a faster and faster pace of change, work and innovation, corporate innovators should still be able to appreciate their situation, right? : – )
By the way: Ilan Mochari wrote this article based on my survey: Why Money Doesn’t Always Motivate Employees
