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On the face of it, Time is perhaps the easiest IdeaSpace element to understand but it’s also one that I see organization miss time and time again. The biggest mistake it conflating time with money. Daniel Pink has demonstrated repeatedly that money does not create the right kinds of incentives for the creative enterprises of the 21st Century and beyond. Instead, the key variable really comes down to time. Time is far less fungible than money and often requires a significant commitment of resources to take people away from their normal routine. This is one of the reasons I believe that many organizations would prefer the simpler outlet of bribing their employees through bonuses and other monetary structures. A far more productive approach would be to reward people adequately on the financial side but to tie rewards to reflection time or time off. People also need time to engage in the iterative entrepreneurial processes needed to refine ideas. Time to fail and learn from failure is critical to the process of innovation.

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