Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Managing for Creativity

Posted by Zonk on from the make-life-better dept.

theodp writes "After seeing some of the ideas management comes up with as a result of reading the Harvard Business Review, you may be tempted to hide their copies. But make sure they see this month's Managing for Creativity by Dr. Jim Goodnight, the still code-cranking CEO of SAS, the world's largest privately held software company." From the article: "Many academics and businesses have made inroads into this field. Management guru Peter Drucker identified the role of knowledge workers and, long before the dot-com era, warned of the perils of trying to "bribe" them with stock options and other crude financial incentives. This view is supported by the research of Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile and Yale University's Robert Sternberg, which shows that creative people are motivated from within and respond much better to intrinsic rewards than to extrinsic ones."

1 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Article not really about stock options by robla · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article is really a reasonably interesting puff piece for SAS. While SAS seems like a very cool company (I'm guessing Google modeled themselves partly after SAS), the article stresses the reasons why you should offer lots of intrinsic perks (such as a ton of onsite services, such as medical staff, massages, dry cleaning, haircuts, and auto detailing), and doesn't talk much at all about avoiding extrinsic perks. So, if you are hoping to find the juicy bits about why stock options aren't very effective, well, don't look here.

    Incidently, if you saw the 60 Minutes story about SAS, you can probably save yourself the time of reading this article. There doesn't appear to be much that wasn't covered on 60 Minutes. However, if you haven't heard of SAS, it is a very interesting summary. Perhaps this is a more accurate teaser, quoted straight from the article:

    Based in Cary, North Carolina, SAS has been in the top 20 of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list every year it's been published. The employee turnover rate hovers between 3% and 5%, compared with the industry average of nearly 20%. The governments and global corporations that rely on SAS's sophisticated business-intelligence software are overwhelmingly satisfied: The subscription renewal rate is an astounding 98%.

    Rob