"HP LABS IS one of the last remaining corporate research labs in the world," notes Prith Banerjee, the former academic who now heads up the labs.
"We have the world's leading researchers in areas ranging from algorithms to nanotechnology to digital data compression."
He recently undertook a major overhaul of the way the lab is structured, the projects it focuses on, and the paths taken to commercialisation.
When his appointment was announced in May 2007, Banerjee was seen as an unusual choice to head up the venerable HP Labs - an academic administrator and professor whose research experience has an entrepreneurial bent.
After going to the US from India and taking a PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois, he went into academia, with his most recent position as dean of the college of engineering at the University of Chicago.
During that time, he also founded two electronic design automation companies: Accelchip, which he sold to Xilinx in 2006, and Binachip. That's given him a view of the combined fields of research, academics and entrepreneurship.
Placing Banerjee in charge of the Labs underlines HP CEO Mark Hurd's focus on turning innovation into products.
With 600 researchers in seven locations worldwide, HP Labs used to have about 150 ongoing projects with a couple of researchers per project. Banerjee has now funnelled a smaller number of projects worked on by larger teams of researchers into five areas of focus that he calls 'themes': "Information explosion, dynamic cloud services, content transformation, intelligent infrastructure, sustainability," he says.
These are the areas where the company sees the greatest challenges for businesses. The 600 researchers now will focus on 20 to 30 'big bets' at any given time.
An Innovation Program Office (see main story) works to steer projects towards commercialisation. As projects move into commercialisation mode, members of HP's business development section join the team and some researchers move on to new projects while others continue to refine the project towards a product or service.
Why such a massive undertaking as reorganising the labs? "The approach HP had was appropriate for its time," Banerjee says. "However, as the internet is becoming the dominant platform, we need to change way information is accessed, analysed and delivered - hence these themes."
This new plan "sharpens the focus of the labs into grand challenges and opportunities we feel our customers will face on into the future", he says.
- Karlin Lillington
