As managing director of Microsoft Research Asia, Hsiao-Wuen Hon leads a 10-year-old organisation that is the software giant's flagship research arm in the region, responsible for some 350 researchers and engineers.
Hon believes managing innovation in the Beijing-based facility is different from running an organisation with set goals, because often the magic 'spark' is stumbled upon accidentally.
His task in running the lab is a matter of finding the sweet spot between allowing the researchers enough freedom to find their inspirations, and making sure the organisation amasses contributions worthy of being included in Microsoft's final products.
The PhD-holder joined Microsoft as a senior researcher in 1995, and was appointed managing director of Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) last year.
Touching on the 200 or so innovations the lab has contributed to Microsoft's products, Hon told ZDNet Asia in an interview why he holds the conviction that the next wave of Microsoft's innovation will come from Asia.
Q: What research areas are keeping MSRA busy right now?
A: We are working on five main focus areas. First, on making a natural user interface, to incorporate gestures and handwriting into interaction with the computer — it's the holy grail of user interfaces.
Second, we're working on multimedia technology, like compression technology. MSRA has made its name in this area over the last 10 years.
Third, we're working on data-intensive computing, which is the fundamental backend for what's popularly known as 'cloud computing'. There is so much data to mine for research and functions like business intelligence.
Fourth is the current 'killer app' — search advertising. We all use search engines daily. The competition is fierce now with other players like Google and Yahoo. Microsoft wants to perfect this technology.
Fifth is what I classify into fundamentals: computing, networking, and so on. You need a sturdy foundation in this to support any R&D (research and development) in the lab.
Which of these areas is MSRA dedicating the most resources to?
Let me say first that the importance of research shouldn't be measured by the number of people working on it. Each of the five areas is as important as another. And everything intertwines, in R&D. For example, multimedia technology...
Talkback
I'm sorry, but I have difficulty fitting the words "innovation" and "Microsoft" into a sentence - actually, a negative or interrogative sentence would be easy, but not an affirmative one.
When has MS ever innovated?
Take the Zune for example. It's basically a remodeled Toshiba Gigabeat with the innards of an older iPod.
Well, the name is an innovation, I suppose.
Shame that in Canadian French slang "Zune" is a word for "female genitals."
John Davis
Looks like everything Mr. Hon's employees are working on is already here, or some other company started the research. It is still just like the old days, Apple innovates, Microsoft imitates, only today Microsoft buys the company doing research on a new idea and then claims the ideas as theirs. But, you have to give them credit for giving us the BSOD, the registry, insecure software,and their EULA, transferring all liability to the user.
An oxymoron.