PALO ALTO, Calif. — HP is refocusing its Labs research arm, paring down the number of projects it has going while putting more effort into the ones it thinks will pay off, the company announced at an event here near its corporate headquarters. HP Labs has produced many of the company’s best-known products, from the […]
PALO ALTO, Calif. — HP is refocusing its Labs research arm, paring down
the number of projects it has going while putting more effort into the ones
it thinks will pay off, the company announced at an event here near its
corporate headquarters.
HP Labs has produced many of the company’s best-known products, from the
first pocket-sized scientific calculator to thermal inkjets. But along the
way, the computer giant’s research efforts have got a little defocused. With 23 labs total in seven locations
around the world, the company had more than 150 projects going on, some of which were going nowhere.
“This is a total team HP effort, not just an HP Labs effort. We expect HP
Labs to be at the forefront and we will be a lot more transparent on the
research we are working on and keeping you up to date on things we have
coming,” said Chairman and CEO Mark Hurd, who spoke only briefly at the
event.
So the company is paring down and focusing on the winners, and bringing in the marketing department to help give the engineers and developers a better shot at making their inventions commercially viable. “By putting the entire focus of HP Labs onto 20 or 30 big bets, we hope to solve the most complicated problems facing our
customers in the next decade and driving HP’s growth,” said Prith Banerjee,
senior vice president of research at HP (NYSE:HPQ) and director of HP Labs.
To assist the researchers in making the right bets, HP has established an
internal review board consisting of top technologists and researchers to
transform these technologies into something deliverable to the marketplace.
There will be a readjustment of emphasis in the labs. Only about 10
percent was what Banerjee called “blue sky research,” where researchers go
into totally new territory. Now it will be an even three-way split between
exploratory, blue sky research, applied research on something more solid,
and research into improving existing products.
The top five
Banjeree said HP’s 600 researchers in those 23 labs will focus on five
areas: Information Explosion, Dynamic Cloud Services, Content
Transformation, Intelligent Infrastructure and Sustainability.
He said the Information Explosion refers to the fact that more information will be
created in the next 5 years than has been made in the history of the planet.
“So the trick is finding the needle in this haystack,” he said. That means
better search and analysis of the vast amounts of data.
Cloud Services are about the next wave of services based on the Internet
so that people will have access to their data regardless of location. Shane
Robison, executive vice president and chief strategy and technology officer,
went one further, stating that “device-centric computing is over as
connection-centric computing takes over. The hard drive is just temporary
storage as content sits in the cloud.”
Content Transformation is built around transforming analog data to
digital, device data to another device and digital data to physical. One
proposed project is the scanning of books and then allowing individuals to
add to them (like recipes to a cookbook). Then the updated book is republished with new content.
Intelligent Infrastructure is centered around new smart computing
devices, networks and architectures that are secure and operate at Internet
speeds and scale. HP Labs Sustainability effort is about green computing,
recycling of old equipment and power reduction. One of HP Labs more recent
efforts in this area was Dynamic
Smart Cooling.
Open Innovation
Another element of this revamp of HP Labs is what the company calls open
innovation, which means working with external partners. “We realize not all
the smart people work for HP Labs. So let’s figure out how we can form
relationships to enhance this work,” said Banjeree.
One part of this plan is an entrepreneur-in-residence program to partner
with venture capitalists to learn market trends. In return, HP will share
research expertise with VCs so they can use what HP Labs is cooking up to
take to market. Banjeree said not everything developed in HP would be sold by the company and it would consider licensing research to other firms.
The final piece of the puzzle is HP IdeaLab (not to be confused with the once high-flying dotcom incubator that’s still around). HP IdeaLab will make software under development available for others to download to augment. They never used the magic words – “open source” – however and it’s not clear what kind of contractual or licensing plans HP has in mind.
This article was first published on InternetNews.com.
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 05, 2020
The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
August 14, 2020
Andy Patrizio is a freelance journalist based in southern California who has covered the computer industry for 20 years and has built every x86 PC he’s ever owned, laptops not included.
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
