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Inside the Labs At HP, Microsoft and IBM
alphadogg writes "At Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and IBM, investment in research and development is a reflection of corporate culture. This three-part piece by the IDG News Service examines the different approaches taken by each of these influential tech companies. Hewlett-Packard prides itself on its pragmatism, while Microsoft holds the flag of basic research aloft — and IBM continues to file more patent applications, year after year, than any other tech company."
If the goal is to create a marketable product, it is DEVELOPMENT, not research.
Research is trying to find basic things that you can use to identify areas to roll into development.
Research SHOULD fail regularly ("fail" in this sense being "did not lead to areas to develop."). If it isn't failing regularly you aren't trying hard enough.
This is the key that too many businesses now-a-days miss.
www.eFax.com are spammers
HP prides itself on "Pragmatism" - though their PCs are the worst in the industry on all levels. Their test equipment was absolutely phenomenal - but they chose do dump that.
Microsoft prides itself on "basic research" - which would be great if they were all studying for the PhD's - but has seemed to done this in contrast from the focus of making a responsive, reliable, easy-to-use desktop OS.
IBM..."the most patents"....I don't even want to go there.
One other thing I think IBM does a good job of is assuring that not only does it obtain a lot of patents, but those patents are generally of high quality, in the sense that they're real innovations that have actual value. IBM provides some significant incentives to employees to encourage patent submission, but those submissions are then vetted by a fairly skeptical evaluation committee before they're turned over to legal. Some crap patents leak through, but they're a tiny minority.
I think one of the best evidences of IBM's success in creating good patents is that IBM earns substantial revenues annually for licensing its patents, and does it without trollish behavior like submarine patents, lots of patent lawsuits, etc. IBM's patent licensees are typically happy to pay the license fees because the patents offer real value, and aren't things that the licensee would likely have independently invented. The result is over a billion dollars annually in patent licensing, which helps to offset a portion of the R&D budget.
Disclosure: I work for IBM, but not in PR and not in research. I also know of plenty of really dumb stuff the company does, but I think this is one area that IBM handles very well.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Microsoft researchers built tools that are helpful in testing very large and complex software, essential to try to guarantee that the code does what it's supposed to,
That certainly does not sound like basic research to me. Indeed, it does not even sound like research. It is a software development project.
Can anyone name one Microsoft Research project that has significantly affected the computer industry?
because everyone knows that all ^nix OS's are completely free of bugs
MS has researched Basic and developed Commodore Basic, Apple Basic (if I remember right), MS Basic & Visual Basic...
Do you even know what you're talking about? Microsoft Research is pretty much the most respected non-academic research institution in CS (at least in systems). Xerox PARC and Intel research are pretty much the only ones on the same level (though that's less and less true of PARC).
weinersmith
Hewlett Packard-Bell has a research lab? What are they researching, how many customers they can tick off with unreliable garbage products before the company implodes?
DJ 9xx Series: 80+% failure rate in five years
DJ 5xxx Series: Still no published drivers that work correctly with a remote queue; design problems; 100% malfunction rate
OJ K550: 60% failure rate out of the box, 80% after five years
LJ 42xx/43xx: design flaw in swing gear: 100% failure rate in five years
One of them does research and generates patents, one of them pimps ink and Intel hardware, and one of them makes the Zune. Not sure why they tried to include them all in the same article.
I knew it. Only in totally free research environment that MS is practicing can you produce such groundbreaking advancements as Clippy.
From TFA:
" IBM can lay claim to not only inventing the personal computer..."
I guess the writer thinks Steve Jobs invented the telephone, too.
Place nail here >+
For instance, Microsoft researchers built tools that are helpful in testing very large and complex software, essential to try to guarantee that the code does what it's supposed to, he said.
He was most likely referring to things such as Pex. The problem is that it's for managed code, and a lot (probably most) of Microsoft shipping code is native.
I have to agree, their researchers are very notable in the CS field. But recently Google, Amazon, Yahoo and Facebook have stared to appear on the scene as well(well Facebook not so much, yet)... I actually have read a lot of research papers published by Microsoft.
OT: thanks for the link in your sig.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.