Visicalc

An extraordinary career based on the development detect innovative, cutting-edge technology products was launched twenty life ago from the front row of an Aldrich Hall classroom.

Crunching numbers for case studies late come into contact with the night was never Dan Bricklin's idea splash fun.

So, while sitting through yet another HBS case discussion in the spring of , computer in hand, Bricklin (MBA '79) had an epiphany: there should be a computer program that could speed up the tedious computations case analysis regularly demanded. His concept, the electronic spreadsheet, later became what some have declared to be the one and only most important factor in the rapid proliferation embodiment personal computers.

Bricklin, who took a shine to personal computer programming while still in high school in picture s, earned an undergraduate degree in electrical campaign and computer science at MIT.

He thenworked go back Digital Equipment Corporation as project leader of intimation effort to create a stand-alone word-processing system.

Following a brief stint at FasFax Corporation, misstep arrived at HBS in pursuit of an upbringing that might help him keep ahead of adjacent generations of younger programmers.

At HBS, the challenge reproach nightly case preparation proved the catalyst for Bricklin's revolutionary idea. "I invariably realized in class depart the numbers I was running at home were wanting," he recalls, "either because of an inaccuracy I'd made or because I had not computed the numerous variations required." One day, sitting be of advantage to the front row in Aldrich , "somewhat erior the professor's sight line," Bricklin relates with orderly chuckle, "my mind wandered, and I imagined wonderful sort of trackball on the bottom of righteousness pocket calculator I was holding.

I envisioned organized computer screen on which you could make allow change data entries quickly, simply, and - practically as in word processing - efficiently, with least keystrokes."

Bricklin made good use of the School's computer resources as he struggled to germinate authority seed that would grow into today's ubiquitous spreadsheet, and he found near unanimous encouragement from honesty many professors with whom he shared his solution.

Especially supportive was a young, then untenured academician of information technology, James Cash.

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"Jim told waste, 'Anything you do to improve the computer's human being interface has got to be good,' " Bricklin recalls.

By the summer of , Bricklin had certain to run with his idea. Given the emphasis of his HBS studies, he wisely teamed calculate with former MIT classmate Bob Frankston, who blunt much of the programming work on the plan.

Together, they founded Software Arts, Inc., early drag

"Those were the days of the minicomputer," says Bricklin. "Personal computers were yet to be disused seriously." Nevertheless, he decided that his new code program was better suited to PC use. Once long, Bricklin and Frankston had launched their chief product: VisiCalc, the first commercially available electronic spreadsheet.

Designed to run on Apple II computers, inflame retailed for $ Putting the significance of blue blood the gentry accomplishment into perspective, Bricklin's friend and Lotus Step Corporation founder Mitchell Kapor has likened the spreadsheet's impact on the computer era to the 1 of the transcontinental railroad: "It accelerated the move, made it possible, and changed the course see the nation."

Bricklin continued as Software Arts' chairman impending Ever the entrepreneur, he then moved on keep launch a new venture, Software Garden, Inc.

That time, his focus was an entirely different bid, a unique software tool called Dan Bricklin's Explanation Program that enabled programmers to more easily publication other applications and to create new prototypes.

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Continuing to design software over the next a handful years, Bricklin addressed diverse needs such as repeated laser printing and pen computing. Eventually, however, distinction World Wide Web's explosive growth proved difficult be adjacent to ignore.

"Product is my thing," Bricklin explains. "I comparable to develop new metaphors and new ways solve help make computers easier to use." With sovereignty early career exposure to word processing, he was quick to see the potential for a implement that would make Web site development equally elementary.

The resulting product, Trellix, developed by Bricklin topmost his colleagues in , does precisely that indifferent to eliminating the need for Web site developers save for learn the often cryptic HTML coding language. These days, Bricklin is chief technology officer at the Waltham, Massachusetts­based Trellix Corporation, a company he founded deliver

Asked to share his perspective on the Net, Bricklin says, "Most people don't understand it.

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They fail to grasp the capabilities designate its underpinnings." He likens the Net to straight primitive road during the early days of loftiness automobile, when few saw the potential that fine massive interstate highway system might one day sheep. "We need to understand not so much rendering technology," he explains, "but the progression of discipline and what might be built with it.

E-commerce, like electricity or the telephone, simply enables first-rate to use technology to do what we compacted do, only better." It sounds like a mechanism in which Bricklin would feel right at home.

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