Inside the world’s top R&D labs
I love visiting labs. When I was a kid, I was taken on a tour of IBM Labs Hursley and I think that was what got me into computers. Later, when I was 11, I visited Prestel in London.
A few years ago, I wrote an article for CBI Business Voice about R&D labs and I visited MIT Media Lab, BT AdAstral, Microsoft Research Cambridge and others. I really enjoyed that too (and incidentally, met someone from Microsoft who gave me my first corporate gig). I also did articles for Director on Google and Ideo.
Just recently, I’ve been doing a lot of work for HP and I visited their labs in Bristol a couple of times and this month I was in Houston visiting their HQ there. Cool! I love my job!
Anyhow, here are some of the articles:
- Director - Mothers of Invention (Ideo) (PDF)
- Director - Google (PDF)
- Business Voice - R&D Labs (PDF)
- Part 1 - Blue sky thinking
- Part 2 - Virtualisation is the future
- Part 3 - Utility computing
- Part 4 - Computers you can trust
- Part 5 - The Semantic Web
Technorati Tags: R&D, Labs, HP, Google, IDEO, IBM, BT, AdAstral, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, MIT, Media Lab, Bristol, utility computing, trustworthy computing, semantic web


mj wrote:
What does R&D stand for?
Posted on 23-Oct-07 at 4:12 pm | Permalink
scientist wrote:
Seems like you do good job in making CS clear for people.
However, I did not quite understand — if those 3-4 paragraphs is all that constitutes each of the 5 parts on HP Labs, than why did you split those in parts?
Posted on 24-Oct-07 at 2:01 pm | Permalink
Matthew Stibbe wrote:
I split it into five sections because I wrote it in five sections that came out over a four week period. I’m only linking it here now that the series is finished.
Posted on 24-Oct-07 at 2:07 pm | Permalink
Matthew Stibbe wrote:
R&D stands for ‘research and development’.
Posted on 24-Oct-07 at 2:07 pm | Permalink
scientist wrote:
>>I split it into five sections because I wrote it in five sections that >came out over a four week period.
Thanks for the answer.
I only meant to say that even though material is good, I was disappointed at the end.
Having discovered you page and having seen 5 “parts” on HP labs I cooked myself a coffee, leaned back and prepared myself for a long journey. Instead, I discovered only 4 paragraphs written for each part…
Sorry, just trying to make a usefull comment from readers perspective…
Best regards,
Dmitri
Posted on 24-Oct-07 at 2:11 pm | Permalink
Matthew Stibbe wrote:
Always leave them wanting more
There is more content in the PDF articles.
Posted on 24-Oct-07 at 2:13 pm | Permalink