Daniel Pink
2011 Ranking: #29
Author, journalist, speechwriter, political aide, capturer of the business zeitgeist, Daniel Pink is, or has been, all of these and more.
Along the way, Pink has written four books that have been translated into 32 languages. In Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself (2001), he was one of the first to celebrate the generation of self-employed workers. Freed from conventional corporate life, he argued, a growing number of people were liberated by the internet to lead fulfilling and productive lives on their own terms. In The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, Pink welded the Japanese manga cartoons with the business book genre to produce another bestseller.
A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future looks at the power of creative thinking in the modern business world. More recently, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us argues that we need to abandon the ineffectual carrot and stick approach, and the importance of doing something we love for a career.
Pink is a contributing editor to Wired magazine.
