The State of R&D At HP, IBM, and Microsoft

jcatcw writes "Computerworld surveys the R&D efforts at HP, IBM and Microsoft ($17 billion annually) and raises the question: Are these companies supporting more long-term basic research, or just the usual short-term, product-oriented work? HP is consolidating its focus on a few 'big bet' projects in five major research areas — information explosion, dynamic cloud services, content transformation, intelligent infrastructure, and sustainability. IBM has four 'high-risk' basic research areas — nanotechnology, cloud computing, integrated systems and chip architecture, and managing business integrity through advanced math and computer science. Many of the 272 research projects named at Microsoft Research's Web site are structured with major product lines like Windows, Office, or Xbox in mind, but many also seem to have no likely application to anything the company sells today."

Comments

Re:The nature of research

[Ichoran]

Researchers--good ones, anyway--generally don't have a problem focusing. Having an overarching theme just makes it easier for them to focus on the problem that you want them to work on.

Also, research doesn't need to involve a solution. Much of the best basic research usually involves just wanting to know how something works. (Once you understand, then you can come up with applications and devise solutions using the new findings, but that's often the &D part of R&D.)

As much as I don't like Microsoft...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

MS research actually does some pretty cool stuff and, more notably, that cool stuff includes things unrelated to OMG-Must-Keep-Wall-Street-Happy-This-Quarter type projects.
I fully admit that I am speaking from a small dataset; but I am inclined to suspect that good corporate R&D is perhaps the one upside to companies with more market power than is strictly desireable. Think about Bell Labs back in the day. They did loads of basic research, including such minor little projects as transistors and Unix. Compare this to our dear present day carriers, whose primary mode of "innovation" appears to be writing ever more incomprehensible contracts.

This is hardly to say that high concentrations of market power are a good thing, as R&D can be done in startups and universities and the like without all the downsides; but it does seem that high levels of market power do, somewhat, preserve R&D from being sacrificed on the altar of quarterly results.

Re:As much as I don't like Microsoft...

[AnyoneEB]

Probably Singularity, F#, Spec#, Sing#, .... Actually, just look at their Wikipedia page yourself: Microsoft Research. I may not be a big fan of Windows (see: my sig), but Microsoft Research does some cool stuff.

didn't we just hear about HP?

[peragrin]

Didn't researchers at HP recently discover how to build memreistor's? That isn't a 6 month to market product and can profoundly change computing.

Thus negating the article at least for HP. IBM does work like this also it is where the Cell processor idea came from years and years ago.

MSFT does have singularity, and a few other pieces of completely random but cool tech that will break compatibility with their other offerings so they will never see the market but are still done just because.

Re:didn't we just hear about HP?

[shutdown -p now]

Oh, there's plenty of stuff that comes out of Microsoft Research into the mainstream MS products. Implementation of generics in .NET 2.0 was one such thing. LINQ was another. Now they're "productizing" (i.e., polishing up for inclusion in Visual Studio) F#.

I would imagine that it works roughly the same for other companies. You have to keep track of their research projects to find out about that, though. It's rare that a research project transforms into a cash cow straight away - instead, good (and marketable at the given point of time) ideas are reused.

Research is practically a Moot Point

[mpapet]

Seriously,

These companies are so large the basic research dies sometime after the researcher gives his presentation to Marketing/Product Management.

Marketing may, actually come up with some good ideas, and send them into some Managerial circle jerk with Sales Management. After a couple of comments, the good ideas die in a perpetual Gordian knot.

The knot presents itself as:

1. No customers for new idea.
2. No budget for some new idea.
3. No "proven" market for new idea.
4. No one is willing to risk their status taking a chance at a new product.

Which leads to a tremendous waste of resources "catching up" to upstarts at a later date.

Re:Research is practically a Moot Point

[Timothy Brownawell]

Certainly not true about Microsoft Research. As mentioned in the article, Microsoft Research is practically a university. Everything they research ends up peer-reviewed at academic conferences and in academic journals. It's virtually in the public domain.

I find it kinda hard to believe that they don't patent anything.

Re:Designed in Taiwan

[H0p313ss]

You might want to try explaining this to the tens of thousands of IBM employees in North America.

I think that thousands of former IBM employees in North America already know.

So explain why they're hiring?

Yes... they may have reduced their helpless desk staff, but R&D is growing

Corporate research then and now

[ErichTheRed]

Yes, it is true that large companies spend some money on research. It's not the same kind of spend we used to have though, and that won't change until companies don't have to constantly scramble to post big numbers every quarter.

Since this pressure is going to be there from now on, all research will continue to focus on a product the company can sell in a very short time. (Look at multi-touch surfaces rumored to be included in Windows 7 for example.)

There are two problems that will keep this short term focus going forever. The first is that everyone depends 100% on the stock market for their retirement now -- this wasn't the case in the 60s and 70s when Bell Labs, IBM, etc. were able to invest huge amounts of money in research. The second problem is that because everyone's responsible for their own retirement, they're constantly watching the market, making it impossible for a company to think long term. If you miss your numbers as CEO for more than a quarter or two, you're fired, even if you're doing the right things long-term.

I can't imagine a CEO being able to address a shareholder meeting and explain that research is important. Everyone would start shouting "Shut up and gimme my money!"