Efforts to link researchers to business operations are not new or exclusive to IBM. As far back as 1956, the IBM unit that sold computer systems to the federal government set up a jointly financed group with IBM. Research to develop new products. But the company's effort to create and nurture new links has become much more aggressive in the last decade.
Other projects
Besides pegging compensation to cooperation and making research executives responsible for specific relationships, 12 major IBM programs are jointly managed by executives from IBM. Research and other IBM units like the Software Group E-Commerce program.
It also has 16 other research-intensive projects that are not jointly managed but are at least partially outside Horn's domain. For instance, the Life Sciences unit, an effort to make IBM a bigger name in the increasingly computerized world of medicine, has many researchers on its staff but reports to John M. Thompson, vice chairman of IBM, who oversees emerging businesses, rather than Horn.
"IBM is better than any other research organization in the way it keeps evolving its model of how to connect to the company," said Buderi, author of Engines of Tomorrow: How the World's Best Companies Are Using Their Research Labs to Win the Future.
RSS