Boosting Collective IQ 0

Overview 1

Collective IQ diagram
Collective IQ diagram
Collective IQ diagram
Collective IQ diagram
Click to enlarge
Source: Engelbart's Bootstrap "Paradigm Map"

With the world changing exponentially, our ability to address important problems and challenges collectively must improve commensurately to stay ahead of the curve. Collective IQ is a measure of how effectively a group, organization, community, network, nation, or world can address important challenges -- whether finding a cure for cancer, bringing out a successful new product or service, or turning around a disadvantaged community. 1a

Collective IQ depends heavily on how well an organization networks the people who need to be involved in the solution, and leverages their brainpower to collectively address the situation. Over the years, Doug distilled the Collective IQ capability to its essence: (1) how effectively a group concurrently develops, integrates and applies its knowledge (CoDIAK), which in turns depends heavily on (2) how well it captures, organizes and exploits the emerging knowledge in dynamic knowledge repositories (DKRs). 1b

Boosting the Collective IQ capability begins with harnessing the best practices and tools you can muster to facilitate the CoDIAK and DKR process, thereby establishing a baseline foundational dynamic knowledge environment, and then continuously innovating that dynamic knowledge environment with better and better tools and practices as resources permit. 1c

Examples of practices might include improved teaming, leadership, stakeholder engagement, meeting facilitation, project management, conventions for formatting, tagging, and sharing important documents. Examples of tools might include groupware, a project website and wiki, shared bookmarks, document management tools, etc. Over the years Doug Engelbart identified a set of tool requirements for a high powered, coherent dynamic knowledge environment that are not yet adequately addressed in today's prevailing information technology. These requirements for open hyperdocument systems (OHS) as he called it provide an important point of reference and road map for evolving the dynamic knowledge environment. 1d

In boosting Collective IQ, as with improving any important capability, it is helpful to put the capability under a microscope so to speak, to understand its lineage, drill down into its component parts, understand how it plays into the bigger picture, and ultimately accelerate the co-evolution of enabling tools and practices as a coherent ecosystem. For more on how to do this, see About Capability Augmentation and About Co-Evolution.

Since the objective is to boost our Collective IQ exponentially, rather than incrementally, Doug also hammered out a strategic approach for rapidly and cost-effectively bootstrapping our Collective IQ, with a set of organizing principles specifically designed to accelerate the evolution and innovation of enabling tools and practices, while sharing the costs, risks, and benefits of fast tracking the exploration with other trailblazing organizations. 1e

To boost our collective capability on a more global scale, beyond the borders of a particular organization or region, it becomes increasingly vital to shift from our current paradigm of closed systems and knowledge islands to a dynamic knowledge environment that can scale up planet wide, with the provision to put privacy barriers selectively where needed. To this end, Doug Engelbart coined the term knowledge-domain interoperability and identified essential requirements for open hyperdocument systems (OHS). 1f

Further Inquiry2