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“Might the future of business lie in encouraging shoulds rather than indulging wants? Could corporations help us bring out our better selves?”

As usual, Dan Heath and Chip Heath have a great column in the April 2009 issue of Fast Company. They write about why customers will pay to restrain themselves.

Think about a piggy bank, which is like a security system for a world where you’re the burglar. In purchasing a piggy, you’re paying $10 to protect $22 in spare change from your own hands. Life is full of piggy-bank situations, where we crave restrictions on our own behavior. Might your business benefit from helping your customers handcuff themselves?

From watching television while running the treadmill to the Antabuse pill used by alcoholics to make you sick when you drink, “All of us seek ways to save ourselves from our own weaknesses,” say the authors.

Time’s Michael Grunwald echoes this thinking in his April 13 article. Grunwald successfully argues how the Obama team is using the science of change and behavioral economics to fundamentally alter the way we live. Peter Orszag, Obama’s budget director, is “obsessed with behavioral economics.” Orszag took part in a recent marathon and, to ensure he finished, he setup a significant automatic donation to a charity he did not like in the event he did not cross the finish line.

It’s interesting to think how businesses could leverage this way of thinking. The Heath brothers have a few examples of their own, as does Grunwald’s article.

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