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The Memo That Spawned Microsoft Research
An anonymous reader writes "In 1991, Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold wrote a 21-page memo to Bill Gates, laying out a plan to create what would become Microsoft Research. Here is the previously unpublished memo and some analysis, along with the original slides that Myhrvold used to pitch the idea to Microsoft's top brass. With the future of Microsoft now in question, it's interesting to see how forward-thinking the company was 20 years ago. It even foresaw how pitfalls in tech transfer, organizational structure, and product R&D could make it fall behind future competitors---who would turn out to be Google, Apple, and Amazon in search, mobile devices, and cloud computing."
1) Research is good - every other large technology company does it
2) An R&D department is relatively cheap compared to the money you might waste building the wrong things
3) Let's set up a typical R&D department to do typical R&D things
Zzzzzzzzzzzz....
No, that's from their D&D department, not their R&D department...