Companies have gotten very good at getting customers to do free work—pumping their own gas, conducting their own checkouts, filling out online forms. In each case, the mutual benefit is clear, and customers tacitly agree to an exchange of value: “I’ll pump my gas if you give me a price break.” But some organizations are finding ways to tap people’s mental and physical energy on the sly, siphoning off a little extra value. Proponents typically say they’re capturing “wasted” energy; detractors argue there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
A version of this article appeared in the October 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review.
