The Hindu Business Line : HP Labs to focus on revenue generation

Bangalore, Jan. 16 HP Labs, the central research lab of Hewlett-Packard Co, said two years from now it would launch one high impact product or service every fiscal, which would add to the company’s revenue.

The organisation that went through a significant transformation in 2008 is now focused on ‘Technology Transfer’ or innovation that would translate into business for HP, said Mr Prith Banerjee, Director, HP Labs.

“In the past, HP Labs had created a lot of interesting technology that somehow did not convert into business for HP. Now we are focused on revenue opportunity for HP,” he added.

It has set up a process that would require the research teams to go all the way to prototype a product, sell them to customers and show the company that it is a viable business model.

“This is a significant change in strategy. The analogy is similar to a bunch of start-up companies looking for venture capital funds,” said Mr Banerjee.

In a given year HP Labs would have about 10 projects that will end, he said. Of those, three would be selected for technology transfer and finally only one project would survive, he added.

Another goal for the organisation is to identify really important customer problems that are also technologically difficult to solve and work on innovation centred on these issues.

HP Labs has identified eight high impact themes comprising commercial digital printing, content transformation, immersive interaction, information explosion, analytics, cloud computing, intelligent infrastructure and sustainability, and these are the big bets it will make, he added.

At present the organisation has 22 large projects under these eight themes and there are about 15 to 20 people working on each project. There are now 23 labs spread across US, UK, Israel, India, China, Japan and Russia, each focusing on one project.

Mr Banerjee said the economic environment will not have any impact on the R&D budget. All funds for HP Labs are provided from within the company. It has a yearly budget of $150 million.

He said a large part of the research would be focused on emerging markets such as the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). “The research area we have picked — customer problems — gives opportunity to take advantage of these markets.” More than 60 per cent of HP’s revenue comes from outside the US, he added.

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