Donna Dubinsky
Encyclopedia
Donna Dubinsky is a businesswoman who played an integral role in the development of personal digital assistant
s (PDAs) serving as CEO of Palm, Inc.
and co-founding Handspring
with Jeff Hawkins
in 1995. She has gone on to co-found the brain research company Numenta
in 2005, also with Hawkins, around whose ideas she has said she is happy to build her career.
Fortune nominated her, together with Hawkins, to the Innovators Hall of Fame, while TIME
named the pair as part of its Digital 50 in 1999 for their contribution to the development of the PDA.
, where her father worked as a scrap dealer. She went to a high school where armed guards had to keep order but eventually ended up going to Yale University
where, as a student in Jonathan Edwards College
, she majored in history and earned her bachelor's degree
in 1977. Dubinsky then worked for the Philadelphia National Bank for a while before obtaining an MBA from Harvard Business School
in 1981.
After graduating from Harvard Business School, she went to Apple Computer where she started work as a customer-support liaison. By 1985 she was running part of the company's distribution network. However, she became unhappy due to turf warfare within the company.
In 1986, Bill Campbell
recruited her to a senior position in Claris
, a software subsidiary of Apple. Dubinsky was responsible for international sales and marketing and within four years, her group was responsible for 50% of Claris's sales. However, Dubinsky decided to leave in 1991 when Apple decided not to spin out Claris into an independent company.
to study French, Dubinsky met Jeff Hawkins through the introductions of Bill Campbell and Bruce Dunlevie. Hawkins was looking for a CEO to manage Palm Inc., which would join with other companies such as Tandy Corporation
and Casio
. The consortium produced a PDA called the Zoomer PDA on October 1993, just after the Newton MessagePad was released by Apple. Zoomer was a market failure along with similar products developed by Hewlett-Packard
, Sharp
, and Toshiba
.
By 1994, companies had spent a billion dollars to develop PDAs without any of them becoming commercially successful. Hawkins took a hard look at the previous products, and at all the feedback from the market, and proposed the idea for the product that eventually became the PalmPilot
.
Palm, Inc. decided to take full responsibility for the manufacture, programming, and distribution of the new product which was code-named Touchdown. However, it struggled for a couple of years to find the financial support needed to bring the product to market. In 1995, U.S. Robotics
acquired Palm Inc. for US$
44 million, bringing the Touchdown to market, originally as the Pilot 1000
and Pilot 5000.
The first PalmPilot went on sale in April 1996. After a few months, sales started ramping quickly. In its first 18 months, more than one million PalmPilots had been sold. 3Com
acquired U.S. Robotics, with its Palm subsidiary, in 1997. In 2000, Palm was spun out via an IPO into an independent company.
quickly became disillusioned with 3Com's plans for Palm, Inc. and left in June 1998 to found Handspring
. Their track record and the tech boom that was then underway in the US meant that the trio were easily able to finance their new company.
Dubinsky was the CEO of the new company which produced its first product, the Handspring Visor, by September 1999. The company decided to target the lower end of the market. Within a year, the company had managed to capture 25% of the market. Handspring ultimately became a leader in the market of smartphones with the Treo. In 2003, Handspring merged with Palm, Inc., having found that they had evolved in complementary directions, and that they would be far stronger by joining together. The company, formed through the merger of Palm and Handspring and the simultaneous spin-off of Palm's operating system
group as PalmSource
, was named palmOne. In 2005, palmOne was renamed to Palm, Inc., returning to its roots, and the independent PalmSource was acquired by Access Corporation of Japan
.
Donna Dubinsky, together with Jeff Hawkins
and Dileep George recently founded Numenta, Inc.
to further develop the pattern recognition
software termed Hierarchical Temporal Memory
.
Dubinsky serves as a director of Palm. She also serves on the board of the Computer History Museum
in Mountain View
, and recently was appointed to the Yale Corporation
.
Dubinsky adopted a child from Russia
in the mid-1990s and married Len Shustek in 2000.
Dubinsky is one of three professors teaching a course at the Stanford GSB
entitled Entrepreunership: Formation of New Ventures (Strategic Management 353).
Jay O. Light
. The award was also given to: Ayala Corp. chair Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, A. Malachi Mixon of Invacare
, Sir Martin Sorrell
of WPP Group and Hansjorg Wyss
of Synthes
. She was cited for “introducing the first successful personal digital assistant (PDA) and who is now developing a computer memory system modeled after the human brain.”
Personal digital assistant
A personal digital assistant , also known as a palmtop computer, or personal data assistant, is a mobile device that functions as a personal information manager. Current PDAs often have the ability to connect to the Internet...
s (PDAs) serving as CEO of Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc.
Palm, Inc., was a smartphone manufacturer headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that was responsible for products such as the Pre and Pixi as well as the Treo and Centro smartphones. Previous product lines include the PalmPilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm VII, Zire and Tungsten. While their older...
and co-founding Handspring
Handspring (company)
Handspring was a maker of Palm OS-based Visor- and Treo-branded personal digital assistants. It was run by Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, the original inventors of the Palm Pilot and founders of Palm Computing, after they became unhappy with the direction in which 3Com was taking...
with Jeff Hawkins
Jeff Hawkins
Jeffrey Hawkins is the founder of Palm Computing and Handspring...
in 1995. She has gone on to co-found the brain research company Numenta
Numenta
Numenta is a company founded March 24, 2005, by Palm founder Jeff Hawkins with his longtime business partner Donna Dubinsky and Stanford graduate student Dileep George. It is headquartered in Redwood City, California.-Origin:...
in 2005, also with Hawkins, around whose ideas she has said she is happy to build her career.
Fortune nominated her, together with Hawkins, to the Innovators Hall of Fame, while TIME
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
named the pair as part of its Digital 50 in 1999 for their contribution to the development of the PDA.
Early years
From a Jewish background, Dubinsky grew up in midwest MichiganMichigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, where her father worked as a scrap dealer. She went to a high school where armed guards had to keep order but eventually ended up going to Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
where, as a student in Jonathan Edwards College
Jonathan Edwards College
Jonathan Edwards College is a residential college at Yale University. Established in 1932, it is the oldest of Yale's residential colleges. Members of the Yale community refer to it informally as J.E....
, she majored in history and earned her bachelor's degree
Bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree is usually an academic degree awarded for an undergraduate course or major that generally lasts for three or four years, but can range anywhere from two to six years depending on the region of the world...
in 1977. Dubinsky then worked for the Philadelphia National Bank for a while before obtaining an MBA from Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...
in 1981.
After graduating from Harvard Business School, she went to Apple Computer where she started work as a customer-support liaison. By 1985 she was running part of the company's distribution network. However, she became unhappy due to turf warfare within the company.
In 1986, Bill Campbell
Bill Campbell (CEO)
William "Bill" V. Campbell is the current Chairman of the Board and former CEO of Intuit Inc., and a board director at Apple, Inc. He formerly worked for Apple Inc. , Claris , and GO Corporation ....
recruited her to a senior position in Claris
Claris
Claris was a computer software developer formed as a spin-off from Apple Computer in 1987. It was given the source code and copyrights to several programs that were owned by Apple, notably MacWrite and MacPaint, in order to separate Apple's application software activities from its hardware and...
, a software subsidiary of Apple. Dubinsky was responsible for international sales and marketing and within four years, her group was responsible for 50% of Claris's sales. However, Dubinsky decided to leave in 1991 when Apple decided not to spin out Claris into an independent company.
Palm Inc.
After a year's sabbatical in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to study French, Dubinsky met Jeff Hawkins through the introductions of Bill Campbell and Bruce Dunlevie. Hawkins was looking for a CEO to manage Palm Inc., which would join with other companies such as Tandy Corporation
Tandy Corporation
Tandy Corporation was a family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Tandy was founded in 1919 as a leather supply store, and acquired RadioShack in 1963. The Tandy name was dropped in May 2000, when RadioShack Corporation was made the official name.-History:Tandy began in 1919...
and Casio
Casio
is a multinational electronic devices manufacturing company founded in 1946, with its headquarters in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Casio is best known for its electronic products, such as calculators, audio equipment, PDAs, cameras, musical instruments, and watches...
. The consortium produced a PDA called the Zoomer PDA on October 1993, just after the Newton MessagePad was released by Apple. Zoomer was a market failure along with similar products developed by Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard Company or HP is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA that provides products, technologies, softwares, solutions and services to consumers, small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises, including...
, Sharp
Sharp Corporation
is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products. Headquartered in Abeno-ku, Osaka, Japan, Sharp employs more than 55,580 people worldwide as of June 2011. The company was founded in September 1912 and takes its name from one of its founder's first...
, and Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
.
By 1994, companies had spent a billion dollars to develop PDAs without any of them becoming commercially successful. Hawkins took a hard look at the previous products, and at all the feedback from the market, and proposed the idea for the product that eventually became the PalmPilot
PalmPilot
The PalmPilot Personal and PalmPilot Professional are the second generation of Palm PDA devices produced by Palm Inc...
.
Palm, Inc. decided to take full responsibility for the manufacture, programming, and distribution of the new product which was code-named Touchdown. However, it struggled for a couple of years to find the financial support needed to bring the product to market. In 1995, U.S. Robotics
U.S. Robotics
USRobotics Corporation is a company that makes computer modems and related products. It sold high-speed modems in the 1980s, and had a reputation for high quality and compatibility. With the reduced usage of voiceband modems in North America in the early 21st century, USR is now one of the few...
acquired Palm Inc. for US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
44 million, bringing the Touchdown to market, originally as the Pilot 1000
Pilot 1000
The Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 were early Palm PDAs produced by Palm, Inc. . It was introduced in March 1996....
and Pilot 5000.
The first PalmPilot went on sale in April 1996. After a few months, sales started ramping quickly. In its first 18 months, more than one million PalmPilots had been sold. 3Com
3Com
3Com was a pioneering digital electronics manufacturer best known for its computer network infrastructure products. The company was co-founded in 1979 by Robert Metcalfe, Howard Charney, Bruce Borden, and Greg Shaw...
acquired U.S. Robotics, with its Palm subsidiary, in 1997. In 2000, Palm was spun out via an IPO into an independent company.
Handspring Inc. and beyond
Dubinsky, Hawkins and Palm marketing manager Ed ColliganEd Colligan
Ed Colligan was president and CEO of Palm, Inc. Colligan is currently working at the private equity firm Elevation Partners, a major financial backer of Palm....
quickly became disillusioned with 3Com's plans for Palm, Inc. and left in June 1998 to found Handspring
Handspring (company)
Handspring was a maker of Palm OS-based Visor- and Treo-branded personal digital assistants. It was run by Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and Ed Colligan, the original inventors of the Palm Pilot and founders of Palm Computing, after they became unhappy with the direction in which 3Com was taking...
. Their track record and the tech boom that was then underway in the US meant that the trio were easily able to finance their new company.
Dubinsky was the CEO of the new company which produced its first product, the Handspring Visor, by September 1999. The company decided to target the lower end of the market. Within a year, the company had managed to capture 25% of the market. Handspring ultimately became a leader in the market of smartphones with the Treo. In 2003, Handspring merged with Palm, Inc., having found that they had evolved in complementary directions, and that they would be far stronger by joining together. The company, formed through the merger of Palm and Handspring and the simultaneous spin-off of Palm's operating system
Palm OS
Palm OS is a mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants in 1996. Palm OS is designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. It is provided with a suite of basic applications for personal information management...
group as PalmSource
PalmSource
ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc. is a subsidiary of ACCESS which develops the Palm OS PDA operating system and its successor, the Access Linux Platform, as well as BeOS...
, was named palmOne. In 2005, palmOne was renamed to Palm, Inc., returning to its roots, and the independent PalmSource was acquired by Access Corporation of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
Donna Dubinsky, together with Jeff Hawkins
Jeff Hawkins
Jeffrey Hawkins is the founder of Palm Computing and Handspring...
and Dileep George recently founded Numenta, Inc.
Numenta
Numenta is a company founded March 24, 2005, by Palm founder Jeff Hawkins with his longtime business partner Donna Dubinsky and Stanford graduate student Dileep George. It is headquartered in Redwood City, California.-Origin:...
to further develop the pattern recognition
Pattern recognition
In machine learning, pattern recognition is the assignment of some sort of output value to a given input value , according to some specific algorithm. An example of pattern recognition is classification, which attempts to assign each input value to one of a given set of classes...
software termed Hierarchical Temporal Memory
Hierarchical Temporal Memory
Hierarchical temporal memory is a machine learning model developed by Jeff Hawkins and Dileep George of Numenta, Inc. that models some of the structural and algorithmic properties of the neocortex. HTM is a biomimetic model based on the memory-prediction theory of brain function described by Jeff...
.
Dubinsky serves as a director of Palm. She also serves on the board of the Computer History Museum
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum is a museum established in 1996 in Mountain View, California, USA. The Museum is dedicated to preserving and presenting the stories and artifacts of the information age, and exploring the computing revolution and its impact on our lives.-History:The museum's origins...
in Mountain View
Mountain View, California
-Downtown:Mountain View has a pedestrian-friendly downtown centered on Castro Street. The downtown area consists of the seven blocks of Castro Street from the Downtown Mountain View Station transit center in the north to the intersection with El Camino Real in the south...
, and recently was appointed to the Yale Corporation
Yale Corporation
The Yale Corporation, sometimes, and more formally, known as The President and Fellows of Yale College, is the governing body of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.The Corporation comprises 19 members:...
.
Dubinsky adopted a child from Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
in the mid-1990s and married Len Shustek in 2000.
Dubinsky is one of three professors teaching a course at the Stanford GSB
Stanford Graduate School of Business
The Stanford Graduate School of Business is one of the professional schools of Stanford University, in Stanford, California and is broadly regarded as one of the best business schools in the world.The Stanford GSB offers a general management Master of Business Administration degree, the Sloan...
entitled Entrepreunership: Formation of New Ventures (Strategic Management 353).
Harvard Alumni Achievement Award
On September 27, 2007, Donna Dubinsky was conferred the Harvard Business School’s highest honor, the Alumni Achievement Award, by DeanDean (education)
In academic administration, a dean is a person with significant authority over a specific academic unit, or over a specific area of concern, or both...
Jay O. Light
Jay O. Light
Jay Owen Light is the former and the ninth dean of the Harvard Business School. He was appointed by Lawrence Summers, on April 24, 2006. On July 1, 2010, he was succeeded by Nitin Nohria....
. The award was also given to: Ayala Corp. chair Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, A. Malachi Mixon of Invacare
Invacare
Invacare Corporation is one of the world's leading manufacturer and distributor of non-acute medical equipments including wheelchairs, mobility scooters, walkers, pressure care and positioning, as well as respiratory products...
, Sir Martin Sorrell
Martin Sorrell
Sir Martin Sorrell is an English businessman and the chief executive officer of WPP Group. He has served in that role since he started the company.-Biography:...
of WPP Group and Hansjorg Wyss
Hansjörg Wyss
Hansjörg Wyss is a Swiss entrepreneur and businessman. As of 2008, Wyss ranks #164 on the Forbes list of billionaires, with a net worth of approximately $6 billion, making him the second richest person in Switzerland.-Life and career:...
of Synthes
Synthes
Synthes Holding AG is a multinational medical device manufacturer based in Solothurn, Switzerland and West Chester, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the world's largest maker of implants to mend bone fractures, and also produces surgical power tools and advanced biomaterials...
. She was cited for “introducing the first successful personal digital assistant (PDA) and who is now developing a computer memory system modeled after the human brain.”
External links
- Computer Resellers Industry Hall of Fame 1999 on Dubinsky, Hawkins and Colligan
- Fortune Magazine article on Dubinsky
- Time Digital 50 article on Dubinsky and Hawkins
- Fast Company article on Palm Inc
- Yale Alumni article on Dubinsky
- PalmOne board of directors
- Harvard Business School article on Dubinsky