Go big or go home

When Prithviraj Banerjee arrived at HP Laboratories, in Palo Alto, Calif., as the organization's new director in August 2007, he was intent on pushing the researchers to swing big. HP Labs, a sprawling enterprise with some 500 researchers spread over seven locations worldwide, is the company's advanced research arm, spending about US $150 million annually. The first commercially available LED, the pocket scientific calculator, thermal inkjet printing, and reduced instruction-set computer architecture were all born in the labs. The labs got the company into digital printing, and HP is counting on those researchers for future wins.