How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. - Josh Kaufman

1. Efficacy — How well does it work? 2. Speed — How quickly does it work? 3. Reliability — Can I depend on it to do what I want? 4. Ease of Use — How much effort does it require? 5. Flexibility — How many things does it do? 6. Status — How does this affect the way others perceive me? 7. Aesthetic Appeal — How attractive or otherwise aesthetically pleasing is it? 8. Emotion — How does it make me feel? 9. Cost — How much do I have to give up to get this?

Options are often an overlooked form of value — flexibility is one of the Three Universal Currencies (discussed later). Find a way to give people more flexibility, and you may discover a viable business model.

In the hallowed halls of businesses (and business schools) around the world, B. F. Skinner is the hidden king. Skinner was one of the major intellectual forces behind the “behaviorist” movement in psychology — the idea that biological systems always respond a certain way to certain stimuli. Control the stimuli and you can control the behavior. “Condition” the organism with rewards and punishments, and the organism will learn how to behave. Over the decades, behaviorism has fallen out of vogue in psychology — research has made it clear that there’s far more to behavior than the carrot and the stick. But that understanding hasn’t extended to business practice — in corporations and business-school classrooms around the world, the search continues for the magic incentive that will make people do what businesses want.