I think Pink was making a even stronger statement than you give him credit for. His statement in the book is that traditional methods of improving performance

I think Pink was making a even stronger statement than you give him credit for. His statement in the book is that traditional methods of improving performance -- more pay for more work -- just doesn't work for tasks that require problem solving. In fact, counter-intuitively, experiments have demonstrated lower performance when paid to accomplish problem solving tasks. What Pink outlines is that to improve performance on problem solving tasks (including creative tasks) you have to provide people with Purpose, Mastery and Autonomy. The latter thing is often missing from most managerial textbooks since most managerial textbooks seem to have been written for industrial workers where precise control is emphasized. This totally backfires for IT jobs (and other types of jobs), and everyone has seen those disasters.