Doug Engelbart and Collective IQ

The great digital pioneer Dr Douglas Engelbart coined the term ‘Collective IQ’*. He identified five key concepts behind raising Collective IQ – Networked Improvement Community (NIC), Dynamic Knowledge Repository (DKR), Concurrent Development Integration and Application of Knowledge (CoDIAK), Open Hyperdocument System (OpHys), and Bootstrap. In his vision, the application of these concepts enhances society’s ability to solve complex, large-scale problems. In an organisation, the value of these concepts is their potential to enhance the organisation’s capabilities to deliver quality products and services to customers, to support innovation and adaptation, and to enrich employees’ work experience.

Networked Improvement Community (NIC)

Engelbart’s concept of a Networked Improvement Community or NIC is one in which a group of electronically connected people with a common purpose use technology cooperatively to tackle the complex problems that they jointly face. They work together to better understand their problem-space, to unearth the best candidate solutions, to decide how best to deploy operational resources and capabilities, to monitor progress, and to adapt effectively to unforeseen complications.
For organisations, the NIC concept is an evolution of the ‘team’. It raises a team’s profile from one in which the members are focused on cooperatively performing a fixed set of tasks to one in which they are also focused on sustaining and improving both how the team works and its outcomes.

Dynamic Knowledge Repository (DKR)

A Dynamic Knowledge Repository or DKR is an online location or ‘container’ in which knowledge is stored, utilised, and developed through direct user interaction. By ‘knowledge’ here is meant codified knowledge, that is, information held in discrete, human-viewable, files that contain text, pictures, diagrams, illustrations, sound recordings, video recordings, etc., or some combination of these.
It is dynamic in the sense that its content is constantly updated by the members of a NIC, who ensure that at all times it is comprehensive, accurate, coherent, authorised, accessible in multiple ways as to the purposes it serves, and linked and marked up in ways that make it explorable in meaningful and useful ways.

CoDIAK

CoDIAK stands for Concurrent Development Integration and Application of Knowledge. It is the concept that you do not ‘stop in order to learn’. The processes used to improve capability should be integrated with, or even identical to, those used to support current action. This has the double benefit of fuelling learning via immediate feedback, and quickly implementing newly devised improvements. DKRs, when properly implemented, are key mechanisms for integrating and applying new knowledge. They also provide the base on which new knowledge can be developed.

Open HyperDocument System

Open Hyperdocument System or OpHys is an ambitious technical challenge set by Doug Engelbart to create a new electronic document format and associated application systems for recording, sharing, retrieving and linking information in a much more effective and collaborative way.
As a general rule, enterprises at the moment tend to manage the documents that contain their corporate knowledge in a fragmented and ad-hoc way. In addition, existing technologies, which are inexpensive and ubiquitous, tend to be underutilised. This is mainly because of a continuing ‘paper bias’ in the way documents are stored and managed.

Bootstrap

Bootstrap or Bootstrapping is the notion that raising Collective IQ potentially operates on three levels, with the upper two levels aimed at boosting or accelerating learning capacity. On the first level (level A), raising Collective IQ increases the capacity to solve specific real-world problems and carry out complex tasks. For example, the problem or task might be how to design and produce a new model car.
The second level (level B) focuses on improving the methods and processes used to improve level A processes. To continue our example, this might involve looking at the way new model cars are designed and produced in general to come up with a better overall approach.
The third level (Level C) focuses on methods and processes used to improve Level B processes. In our example, this might involve improving the way manufactured goods in general, not just cars, are designed and produced.
These levels have implications for the nature of the NICs involved. For our examples above, level A would be addressed by a NIC comprising people working in a motor vehicle company’s design and engineering function. Level B, on the other hand, would require a NIC with representatives from all the motor vehicle company’s key functions (manufacturing, inventory, finance, sales, etc.). For Level C, a NIC involving people from multiple manufacturing companies, academia, and professional societies, not just motor vehicle manufacturers, would be required.
The latter also highlights one of the key aspects of Collective IQ in Engelbart’s view and that is to address complex problems at a societal level that transcend the interests of individual organisations. In the case of our example, working together on improving general new model design and production methodologies benefits all manufacturing companies without impacting their relative competitiveness.
In Engelbart’s words, the essence of bootstrap is “The better we get at getting better, the better and faster we’ll get better.”


*
Engelbart, Douglas C (1995) “’Toward augmenting the human intellect and boosting our Collective IQ” Doug Engelbart Institute (http://dougengelbart.org/pubs/books/augment-133150.pdf)

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