Vocabulary that has been straight-jacketed courtesy of the inelegant and brash world of marketing and corporation-speak is denuded of its beauty and meaning.
Only someone who essentially does not understand language would come up with incentivise. There is no lack of existing and genuinely attested words in the English language which have precisely the meaning which is supposedly conveyed by this bastard child of a Caliban and a daughter of Gorgias. Words bleached of truth! Words forced into the servitude of political or marketing purpose! Words designed expressly to deceive!
But undress "incentivise" and we find lurking there the simple word "motivate" (or synonyms thereof, such as encourage). Why do marketing and corporate-speak induce the befouled labour of word-birth to produce this hideous monstrosity, "incentivise", when there's a perfectly good "motivate" there already?
Ah.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's look at "motivate". It is a clear, easy-to-understand word. It is appropriate in a wide variety of contexts. It's not a new word. It doesn't give a chatoyant impression of saying something profoundly new and exciting in a business-only context. It's a word without pretensions to the slick photo-paper glossiness of marketing.
Ah again.
That means it sounds as though what's going on hasn't any special business meaning, and as though it's nothing new.
Let me quote from what would no doubt be a marketer's version of the Bible: "Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not use real words, but the the corp-speakers shall make some words new, so that they may confabulate and adumbrate and bewilder the people with trick words".
Some bright spark probably looked at the word "motivate" and thought, "It's not punchy enough. It doesn't polish the turd. The whole 'motivational' thing has been done in the realm of motivational books and tapes and speakers and courses. We need some Word Brasso here. I could say 'give incentive', but it just sounds ordinary, something anyone might say. We've got to make it sound newer and more cutting-edge."
And thus was back-created this hideous malformation "incentivise", which DOESN'T EXIST except in the petri-dish mind of those whose souls have long since been lost to the demon of corporation-speak.