About Collective IQ 0

Overview 1

Collective IQ diagram
Collective IQ diagram
Click to enlarge
Source: see Engelbart's Bootstrap Paradigm Map for whole Collective IQ series of slides unfolding.

In Doug Engelbart's words, Collective IQ is a measure of how well people can work on important problems and opportunities collectively – how quickly and intelligently they can anticipate or respond to a situation, leveraging their collective perception, memory, insight, planning, reasoning, foresight, and experience into applicable knowledge. Collective IQ is ultimately a measure of effectiveness. It's also a measure of how effective they are at tackling the complex, urgent problem of how to raise their Collective IQ to the highest potential, so they will be that much more effective at solving complex, urgent problems. As the rate and scale of change around the world increases exponentially, so must our collective ability to dramatically increase our Collective IQ to stay ahead of the curve and thrive. 1a

In its simplest form, Collective IQ is a measure of how effectively a collection of people can concurrently develop, integrate, and apply its knowledge toward its mission (for which Doug affectionately coined the term CoDIAK). And, the more complex the mission, the more critically this depends on how effectively the group can capture, organize, share, and utilize this emerging knowledge in dynamic knowledge repositories (DKRs). 1b

Boosting our Collective IQ begins with employing best practices and tools to augment these collective capabilities – this forms the enabling dynamic knowledge environment – and then innovating that dynamic knowledge environment with better and better tools and practices to increasingly raise the Collective IQ. 1c

Bootstrapping our Collective IQ is a powerful strategic approach for accelerating the innovation. 1d

Why Collective IQ Matters 2

  • The opportunities, problems, challenges we face are increasing exponentially on a global scale, so finding exponentially more powerful ways to collectively address important challenges is critical;
    • 2a
  • This is both a dire threat and a golden opportunity – companies, initiatives, regions, nations that kick into gear on this will likely surpass those that don’t in leaps and bounds.
    • 2b
  • The sooner we reach critical mass as a planet, the better off we all are, and thus there is tremendous value in sharing best practices, and in addressing this collectively as a Grand Challenge.
    • 2c

Further Inquiry 3