Archive for November, 2009

Dan Pink speaks at TED on the Surprising Science of Motivation.

I am a huge fan of Dan Pink’s books, from A Whole New Mind, to The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, and eagerly await his newest book soon to come out, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, which he introduces in this video.

I have also met Dan in person, when he came to Japan to speak at the Roppongi Academy Hills. I believe he is a CREATOR profile. It takes one to know one!

• His insights are original and authoritative at the same time.
• He uses humor and has the Oxford audience eating out of the palm of his hand.
• He turns our ordinary assumptions upside-down.
• He has a magnificent mastery of metaphor.
• He focuses more on the process, and less on himself.
• He knows how to use pauses effectively.
• He uses argument and reason to reexamine our false assumptions.
• He takes us by surprise and keeps us hanging on for what comes next.
• He makes good eye contact with his audience.
• He speaks with passion on his subject.
• He stays focused first on the audience.
• He is as persuasive as a courtroom lawyer.
• He sums up his arguments with key words.

Barry Schwartz speaks at TED on Our Loss of Wisdom. His message is so engaging that it is easy to overlook some of the reasons that he is able to hold our attention so well.

• He is totally engaging, even though he never leaves the podium and uses only a few simple slides.
• He makes marvelous use of metaphor and story.
• Though he speaks on a profound issue, he is easy to understand, and makes us well aware of the gap between what is, and what should be.
• He speaks about something that every viewer has experienced to some degree.
• Though he speaks from a script, he seldom looks at it, and makes excellent use of eye contact, gesture, and vocal variety.
• He is persuasive and makes both authoritative and playful reference to things ranging from Aristotle to Jazz.
• While alerting us to a serious crisis at hand, he is also reassuring that we can do something about it.
• Though his style is more oratorical, he alerts us to our loss of wisdom, and our loss of the ability to improvise, to think on our feet.