Incentives: Irresistible, Effective, and Likely to Backfire

A good article by Chip and Dan Heath on incentives. Here’s the first paragraph:

Ken O’Brien was an NFL quarterback in the 1980s and 1990s. Early in his career, he threw a lot of interceptions, so one clever team lawyer wrote a clause into O’Brien’s contract penalizing him for each one he threw. The incentive worked as intended: His interceptions plummeted. But that’s because he stopped throwing the ball.

(And for a bonus, you’ll also learn why the really cold upper-Midwestern winters don’t make the people here less happy overall.)

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October 26, 2009 | Filed Under Management | Leave a Comment 
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