Focus on innovation: HP expects restructured labs to produce fewer, more successful projects
Cox News Service -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/10/2008 5:58:00 PM
Hewlett-Packard Co., signaling that it has turned its focus to research and development, has announced a major restructuring of its HP Labs division.
"What we're doing with the re-launch of HP Labs is placing fewer and bigger bets," said CEO Mark Hurd, who took over the ailing HP in 2005 after leaving NCR Corp.
Under the restructuring, HP will consolidate its research in 23 labs around the world. The 700-plus researchers in those labs will focus on 20 to 30 large research projects instead of the 150 or so smaller projects they've typically worked on in the past.
HP executives, speaking at the company's headquarters here, emphasized that the company was not reducing the money or resources it puts into research and development.
"This is not a cost-cutting exercise," said Shane Robison, HP's executive VP and chief strategy and technology officer.
Prith Banerjee, who was hired as director of HP Labs last August, said the revamped HP Labs will focus specifically on five areas:
ƒÞ Dynamic cloud services, or developing Internet-based computing platforms;
ƒÞ Content transformation, or researching ways to continue the transformation of analog content to digital content;
ƒÞ Intelligent infrastructure, or designing smarter and more secure services for computer users;
ƒÞ Sustainability, or creating technologies that are more energy-efficient and less harmful to the environment; and ƒÞ Information explosion, or finding better ways to acquire, analyze and deliver the growing amount of information that consumers and businesses use every day.
HP Labs also announced other new programs, including a Web site where HP customers and others can share ideas with HP researchers and an "entrepreneur in residence" program that will invite venture capitalists and others into the company's labs.
"I want to kind of inject the startup DNA into HP labs," Banerjee said.
HP, whose logo now includes the word "Invent," has a long history of innovation, stemming back to its founding in 1938 that eventually resulted in the creation of today's Silicon Valley.
Among the innovations from HP Labs in the past are the ink-jet printer, thermal imaging and printing, and some of the earliest pocket calculators.
"In a way, this is something of a return to the old HP," said independent tech industry researcher Rob Enderle. "It's HP trying to get back to the same kinds of things that created the tech market in the first place."
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