Last week in the New Media Faculty Seminar at Baylor University we discussed Doug Engelbart’s  1962 report Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework abridged in the New Media Reader. This week we examine the outgrowth of this work in the report on the Mother of All Demos (1968). Christina Engelbart joined us via Skype. She also posted to the seminar blog. For me the most captivating part of the conversation was the idea of bootstrapping innovation. The Doug Engelbart institute has produced a guide to bootstrapping innovation.
I hope you will investigate in more detail than I will present here but the five elements include:
- Focus on Capability: Especially collective IQ/Innovation
- Engage your innovators: Innovation networks
- Leverage your collective IQ: This is enhancing the dynamic knowledge/innovation ecosystem (the DKE)
- Walk your talk: Bootstrapping leverage
- Push the frontier: Accelerating co-evolution
When I think of technology and new media augmenting human intellect I think of Gina Trapani. She was the founding editor of Lifehacker.com and now she blogs at smarterware.org. These five principles of bootstrapping innovation pioneered by Engelbart and his team have continued to inspire. The New Media Consortium has done more than just pick up on these ideas they have taken them and transformed them into a type of dashboard for the organization.Bootstrapping Innovation: NMC
What the NMC has done can be done by schools such as Baylor University or George W. Truett Theological Seminary, accrediting agencies (most relevant to my life Southern Association of Colleges and Universities, Association of Theological Schools) and scholarly communities (Society of Biblical Literature an Catholic Biblical Association) to assess how they are doing bootstrapping innovation. I will explore in coming posts the ways these organizations have been bootstrapping innovation.