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DouglasEngelbart

“As much as possible, to boost mankind’s collective capability for coping with complex, urgent problems.”
Self-proclaimed lifetime goal - Doug Englebart

Douglas Engelbart is perhaps best known for inventing the computer mouse and as a computing pioneer helping develop hypertext, networked computing, and the GUI. Most relevant to this wiki is his lifelong commitment to the development and use of computers and networks to help cope with the world’s increasingly more urgent and complex problems. To this end, he has founded the Bootstrap Institute.

Relevance to Problem Solving

Doug reminds us of the significance of improving our problem-solving abilities. What underlies potentially mundane problems is the realization that improving the problem-solving process through one problem helps us better address many more. There is an incremental path towards significant, world-changing impact.

One Bootstrap insight of particular note is this notion of “improving on any organization’s already existing improvement processes.” Doug argues that an organization’s principal work is an ‘A-activity’ and its efforts at process improvement as a ‘B-activity’. However, the biggest bang for the buck come from an organization’s ‘C-Activities’, which are its efforts at improving the improvement process.

This improving of the improvement process is the heart of our WikiObjective.

See Also