From the intro of Eric Dash & Julie Creswell’s long NYT article on the collapse of Citigroup:
Our job is to set a tone at the top to incent people to do the right thing and to set up safety nets to catch people who make mistakes or do the wrong thing and correct those as quickly as possible. And it is working. It is working.
–Charles O. Prince III, Citigroup’s chief executive, in 2006
I believe that anyone who uses “incent people” rather than “give people an incentive” is prone to taking shortcuts and shouldn’t be allowed to gauge risk for other people.
at first glance I thought they had simply mistyped “innocent” – I’ve never heard of “incent” adjective
Unless I miss my guess, incent is being used as a verb … but no I never saw that before either and I had to read it twice, and, what’s more, I think the author’s take on the quote is pretty much on the money (especially in hindsight). And funny as well.