GREAT AMERICANS--DONNA DUBINSKI AND THE PDA

Donna Dubinski was the mother of the Personal Digital Assistant, the device that has changed the way we live. Fresh from Harvard's M.B.A. program, Donna Dubinsky arrived in Silicon Valley in 1981 to work in marketing for Apple Corp. Dubinsky had grown up in Benton Harbor Michigan, the daughter of a scrap-metal broker, and was pleased to be working in manufacturing. Her experiences at Apple, and then Claris, gave her unique experience in operations and strategy.

In 1992 Dubinsky co-founded Palm Inc. Her partner, Jeff Hawkins, had shown her a hand-held electronic organizer he had prototyped, and she saw the future, though many others had dismissed such a product. Dubinsky's task was to think strategically about the company, raise the cash to develop the product, and bring it to market. She succeeded and ultimately, she and Hawkins sold Palm to U.S. Robotics in 1995 but stayed with the company. Two years later U.S. Robotics was swallowed up by 3Com Corporation. In the meantime, the first PalmPilot had debuted in spring 1996, immediately racking up sales that rivaled the launches of the Walkman, the VCR, and cell phones.

Unhappy at 3Com, Dubinsky and Hawkins split off to found Handspring in June of 1998. As co-founder and chief executive officer of the new company, Dubinsky oversaw a boom in hand-held computing devices and became one of the most important business women in the United States. Most hand-helds had limited memory, and were used as self-contained appointment books, with a few games thrown in. But a slot on the versatile Visor could accommodate small disks with reference works, like Shakespeare's plays or physician's manuals; mini devices like cameras or MP3 players, or even a global positioning system. The product stimulated third-party businesses and lent itself to dozens of uses, giving people the power to access many types of information on the go.
A second Handspring product, the Treo, added cell phone and e-mail capabilities to the mix. In June 2003, Handspring merged with Palm Inc, which had been spun off by 3Com, to form PalmOne, Inc. Dubinsky sits on its board.

The personal digital assistant, has grown into a $7.2 billion business and enabled millions of people to use data on the go. Meanwhile, Dubinski, who is still a young woman, has many places to go in the future and many new worlds to conquer. We will see much of her in the years ahead.