Microsoft research: No pain, no gain
REDMOND, WASH.--Employees at Microsoft are probably used to seeing the software giant enjoy success in almost every market in which it plays. But for the company's 800 researchers, accepting failure is a nature of their job.
Despite the fact that it may represent potential technology ideas, not every research project will see actual productization, said Hsiao-Wuen Hon, managing director of Microsoft Research Asia, in an interview Tuesday with ZDNet Asia at the company's TechFest 2008 research showcase.
Hon heads Microsoft's research lab in Beijing, China--one of five such centers worldwide, including two in the United States, one in Cambridge, England, and Bangalore, India. In July, the software vendor will open its sixth research facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
One project, in particular, that stirred strong memories from Hon was a hardware device his team coined the UPen, or Ubiquitous Pen. First developed some five to six years back, the pen allowed users to print a table or spreadsheet, make notes on the physical document and automatically--via a wireless technology--capture all the annotations and digitize them into the original document.
Describing it as a "great technology idea", Hon recalled that a team of 30 researchers had worked on the project but it was later scrapped for various reasons, one of which was the small market size the technology addressed. Also, another company already had a similar product offering.
"We decided not to pursue it...[and] until today, we feel a little pity about that but that's the nature of research. It takes a lot of effort and sometimes, probably some luck, to really see the fruits of your research efforts," Hon said. "But [as researchers], we can't be too discouraged or distracted by this, and must continue to try and do stuff with high risks."
"A lot of times, it's [a case of] no pain, no gain," he said. "The higher risk you take, the great success you may get. That's why we always say that if you succeed in every project you did, you actually failed… It means you didn't take enough risk."
He noted that while the UPen concept didn't succeed in becoming a commercial product, some components of the technology were transferred into existing Microsoft offerings such as OneNote. He also did not rule out a possibility that UPen may be revived in future when the market allows it.
Researching toward better response
Hon said research serves various business needs, one of which is to help Microsoft better respond to the market and its competitors. Not surprisingly, he named search as an important research development area for the software vendor.
Microsoft employs some 800 researchers worldwide, just over 200 of whom reside in the Beijing lab which was first opened in November 1998. Another 150 engineers, also based in China, are dedicated solely to developing advanced search technology, which Hon said, is a key market for Microsoft.
Hon explained: "There are many different ways to carve and slice research, and one, is [to allow us] to be responsive. For example, in search, there's Baidu [in China] as well as the global Google challenge, and we need to respond to that.
"Search is a very highly competitive area in terms of technology innovation...[as are the markets] Windows Vista and Office [play in], where we also have a lot of competition from Linux and open source," he added.
Research in these areas are, hence, especially critical for the company to remain responsive to its competition, he said.
Microsoft's Beijing research lab has published over 1,500 publications since it was established nearly 10 years ago, and contributed to 200 technology transfer spanning most of Microsoft global product portfolio, according to Hon.
Eileen Yu of ZDNet Asia reported from Microsoft's TechFest 2008 research showcase in Redmond, Washington.