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The Tech Museum of Innovation will host a book launch party Wednesday evening for The Engelbart Hypothesis by Valerie Landau and Eileen Clegg in conversation with Douglas Engelbart.

Ambidextrous Co-Editor-in-Chief Bjoern Hartmann sat down with Douglas Engelbart for a Point of View article for AMBIDEXTROUS Issue #6 The Future. In What Would Douglas Engelbart Do?, Bjoern captures four lessons we can glean from on of our favorite visionaries:

• First off, be stubborn. Very stubborn. His adviser at Berkeley told him that he was wasting his time. For more than a decade, Engelbart couldn’t find reliable financial support. He kept his project afloat with fringe grants for “wildhaired guys” because he was convinced that his ideas were important. The time it takes to convince others of your ideas is measured in years—so plan for the long haul.
• Second, experiment. A lot. The mouse was not a fluke. The Augment group devised chorded keyboards, nosecontrolled pointers, foot pedals, and knee controllers. They partnered with Herman Miller to develop experimental workstation furniture that you would straddle like a horse. Some innovations stuck, many did not. Expect failures—if nothing else, they make for entertaining anecdotes.
• Third, put yourself out on the line. In 1968, Engelbart staged the “mother of all demos.” He introduced his mousecontrolled workstation to an audience of a thousand engineers in San Francisco by using it live. During the demonstration Engelbart brought up a data and video link with team member Bill Paxton in Menlo Park and showed how the two could remotely collaborate on a document in real time. Nothing like it had been done with computers before. It was a high-risk plan, but it paid off with immediate public recognition.
• Finally, and, maybe most importantly, bite off more than you can chew. Improving the collective IQ of mankind was a larger-than-life goal. But for Engelbart it meant he never ran out of intermediate steps to accomplish. His most successful innovations were born out of necessity— they were the means needed to augment collaborative intelligence. Having a bigger picture helped him to solve the real-world problems at hand—and then move forward towards the next challenge.

Check out the full article of What Would Douglas Engelbart Do?.

Ambidextrous is Stanford University’s Journal of Design.