At home with no cat

Today is catch-up day, e-mails to sort out, small articles to write, and try and get my mind around the report I am on. My office could do with a good sort out; I have papers, books and notes all over the place, the report will help me focus the office on the topic in hand.

Discovered a new on-line site yesterday Snapfish.com, I will check it out over the weekend.

HP Labs a proper report

Last week HP made major announcements about the structure of its Labs, and the focus of its research. The number of commercial organisations that still retain a pure research capability, as opposed to a development capability, is limited to a handful of the leading vendors. The challenge for these organisations is to ensure that pure research can be funded, but is still compatible with an era where the focus is on value and reducing costs.

HP spends approximately US$3.6B on R&D with nearly 30,000 employees working in business units, but of this pure research not connected to the business unit’s accounts for about 5%, which is a budget of US$150M, and 600 researchers. HP Labs is a corporate function with the remit to look at new innovations that HP can take from concept to product in the long term.

HP Labs, a great place for a good idea

Today I was in HP labs in Bristol, I got to the hotel at 8.30 pm, and was too late for the meal, so did some work until bed, spoke to a US based journ who had been hassling me for days.

The early start was not what I wanted, but the day was excellent, plenty of good debate, and plenty of stuff that would blow your mind.

HP Labs

HP have taken a practical and different approach to research, they have designed and built a governance model that helps them decide what to research. The work is designed with the environment in mind and HP are showing a leadership approach to how to do blue sky research in a commercial organisation, and show it is valuable.