[London, 03 August 2020]

Today is a sad day for Innovation. Bill English, the serial inventor, has died aged 91. Together with Doug Engelbart, who himself passed in 2013, Bill led a long running research programme into ‘Augmenting Human Intellect’ at the Stanford Research Institute, before moving to Xerox’ PARC in 1971. Together they made a giant contribution to the usability, and hence the ubiquity, of modern personal computing.

Bill and Doug developed many of the concepts and technologies that we now take for granted, but which at the time were brilliant insights into how the emerging power of computing could be harnessed in creative and intuitive ways to automate and simplify our daily work tasks.

They engineered the first fully working computer mouse as far back as in 1963 (yes, that’s right, in 1963!).

They created modern text editing, with many of the features that we now use every day, such as cut-&-paste.

They developed networked collaboration (remote co-workers sharing and manipulate their screens in real time), document management, video conferencing, networked computing (an early version of the internet, incl. hyperlinks) and last but certainly not least, famously the graphical user interface (which Steve Jobs first saw on a tour of PARC and quickly ‘adopted’ it, together with the mouse, for his early PC).

I teach Innovation Management at business schools, so I am particularly aware of the many brilliant innovators who have shaped our modern industry and society. Women and men who truly transformed our world, and on whose shoulders the likes of Steve Jobs could later stand to make their own names and fortunes. People like Malcom McLean, whose idea of a simple metal box (containerisation) made globalisation (and hence the cost effective development and manufacture of the iPhone) possible.

Yet when asked to name the most significant inventors since the 1950’s, most of my Innovation Management students suggest Steve Jobs. None have to-date sadly ever suggested Malcolm, Bill or Doug.

So next time you use your computer mouse, word processor, Windows, Skype, Zoom or Google, I gently invite you to pause for a moment and reflect with some humility and gratitude on the debt that we all owe to Bill English and Doug Engelbart, and all the other great innovators who have shaped our modern world and who are now far too often reduced to mere footnotes in history.

May they rest in peace.

Dr Piotr Ney is an energetic promoter of innovation, digital transformation, customer and operational excellence, and sustainability, with some thirty five years of change leadership, consultancy and senior executive experience. He has an MBA in International Business and a PhD in Economics and Management, lectures part-time in Innovation Management and Disruptive Strategy and is a popular speaker at global business events. Piotr works in London and internationally as an independent consultant and educator.

Copyright © 2020 by Piotr Ney. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be published, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.