Hearing John's reports and analysis of what's going on in HP labs does stir the curiosity and excitement levels a bit - it shouldnt' be, but it's unexpected to hear social media research and dev coming from HP, and given their R&D division's rich history, I really want to see first hand what they're working on.

On the core research side I'll be following their efforts and the outreach side show great promise for HP. I commented on twitter and in email to the execs as HP that market facing research is key and moving that research to the market will be an ongoing challenge. However, the technology transfer and academic outreach is a positive first step. Still I see a ton that HP Labs can do in open source.

I don't think that Prith was saying that HP was going to do a venture capital model per se but instead organize research based upon core themes - some of the biggest problems.

In the past my experience with HP was that the research was to business unit focused and that ends up missing the mark on developing new market opportunities. I think that you do bring up a good point about printing. We all know that HP tried to kill the LaserJet but Hackborn kept it alive - we all know how that turned out.

As a final comment I didn't get the impression that Prith was trying to minimize risk but instead he was talking about "going for the big bets" - that is is risk taking. It seems that the projects are just being aggregated under umbrella categories.

Thanks for the comment and we'll follow this closely.

Cheers

HP Labs continues to laud achievements like ink jet printing and the Memristor, claiming them as evidence of its greatness, but this is terribly disingenuous. Many researchers believe the current HP Labs management would never let such risky projects proceed if they were proposed today! "Big Bets" indeed!

The innovative path is one of uncertainty. We need more investment in a wider range of diverse initiatives, some of which will fail. To sapply classic venture capital standards, we should only expect 1 out of 10 innovations to be wildly successful and most to only break even, but we won't get there if we don't invest in all ten.

HP has always been called the "boy scouts" when it comes to competing and I think a little recklessness is needed..in this fast prod/technology market I think they would be surprised how good things would be if they seeded some stuff out there.

Great points!!

So what makes those there who own P&L actually care about nurturing own lab products instead of going out there buying a company with proven revenue (and enough of it) that will have material impact on their revenue? Second, do they filter ideas based on their ability to meet or beat HP's current gross and operating margins?

You mentioned that Google is killing HP in terms of translating projects to the market... Google is recklessly innovative without much regard to the Street's view. I am curious if HP is willing to be as reckless.