Productive Knowledge Workers Are Fueled by Curiosity
Productivity is falling in the most important parts of the knowledge economy. Here’s how to boost it.
Shiny happy knowledge workers are more productive.
Photographer: Luis Alvarez/Digital Vision/Getty Images
The great management guru Peter Drucker believed that the biggest management challenge of the 21st century is improving the productivity of knowledge workers. “Workers by brain” are relentlessly replacing “workers by hand” as the dynamos of the modern economy, he argued. Thus, the most valuable companies (Google, Microsoft and the rest) are almost all knowledge- rather than resource intensive. Yet we have little idea about how to make them happy and productive.
The average rate of productivity growth is significantly lower in post-industrial societies than it was in industrial societies. The bloated public sector employs ever more paper-shufflers. And productivity seems to be falling in the most important parts of the knowledge economy. Research productivity has declined sharply in software, agriculture and medicine, the average age of Nobel Prize-winners has risen steadily and the size of the teams involved in science has increased.