Doug Engelbart was most celebrated for his technological breakthroughs, but his breakthrough strategy for transformative innovation was considered by some to be his greatest achievement. For a short introduction to his life’s work, see the Tribute Videos on this site
Doug Engelbart is best known as inventor of the computer mouse, and for his seminal 1968 Demo presented at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, CA, which is celebrated as the Mother of All Demos. Learn about these and more Pioneering Firsts in what he called organizational computing — interactive, hyperlinked, collaborative, networked.
CELEBRATION EVENTS
2018 marked the 50th anniversary of his landmark Demo!
See the 50th Anniversary website for events held on three+ continents.
See also Historic Events for celebrations held on the 45th, 40th, 30th, and more.
Strategic Vision
What drove these seminal achievements? His goal from the beginning was to research how teams and organizations working on the toughest problems could become much more dramatically effective at enacting solutions to those problems. Before he set up his lab, or developed any of the above technology, he studied this challenge, what he initially called Augmenting Human Intellect, later Boosting Collective IQ in organizations — be they companies, teams, initiatives, institutions, nations, or society at large. He developed a strategic approach that would not only render heightened Collective IQ capability, but simultaneously accelerate progress toward that goal with the greatest possible impact. He first published these discoveries in 1962 as a Conceptual Framework for Augmenting Human Intellect, and called the underlying strategic approach a Bootstrap Strategy. He put this to work in his lab, which is credited with unprecedented levels of breakthrough innovation. Learn more about his breakthrough strategic thinking at the Engelbart Academy, now more prescient than ever.
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