Criteria

HP Labs

Nokia Research Center

Mission

To meet complex challenges facing its customers and society over the next decade, while pushing the frontiers of fundamental science^[1]

To explore technology frontiers and solve scientific challenges today, in order for Nokia to deliver irresistible personal experiences tomorrow^[2]

Year of foundation, some history

Founded in 1966. The number of research projects have narrowed from hundreds to 20-30 with time (to focus HP’s research on goals that are more closely aligned with business priorities; that makes it more likely the research will be used in commercial projects inside and outside the company).

Founded in 1986 (Nokia looked to the new GSM technology and needed resources to develop it). With time all research products have been divided into three areas: mobile application strategic focus area, multimedia devices strategic focus area, wireless access strategic focus area).

Organization structure and location of research centers

Operates under the direction of Prith Banerjee, Senior Vice President of Research for HP (he helps chart technical strategies for the company, and he heads HP Labs, the company's central research organization, which has seven locations worldwide). HP Labs is organized into seven labs and four research groups located in seven major sites: in Palo Alto, USA; Bangalore, India; Beijing, China; Bristol, UK; Haifa, Israel; Fusionopolis, Singapore; and St. Petersburg, Russia. HP Labs also has significant research teams in Princeton, USA and in Barcelona, Spain.

NRC is a part of Nokia Corporate Development. Operates under the direction of Henry Tirri, Senior Vice President, Head of Nokia Research Center, Dr., Dr.h.c. NCR is organized into 13 locations worldwide (in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America): Bangalore, India; Beijing, Shenzhen, China; Berkeley, Cambridge, Hollywood, Palo Alto, USA; Cambridge, UK; Helsinki, Otaniemi, Tampere, Finland; Lausanne, Switzerland; Nairobi, Kenya.

*Picture is taken from the Nokia Research Center website / http://research.nokia.com/locations

People

600 HP researchers worldwide. They have a variety of technical backgrounds (top graduates), but have to solve tomorrow’s enterprise IT problems today.

500 NRC researchers work in teams worldwide. They have a variety of personal and technical backgrounds, but they are all researching topics related to the future of mobility in the merging physical and digital worlds.

Budget and its elements

HP spends $3.5 billion on research in its product groups, but Labs spends $150 million on fundamental, applied research, and near-term research. The projects are all likely to focus on technologies that are three to seven years away from being products^[3].

Since the early 1990's Nokia has invested close to €35 billion (over $US40 billion) in research and development to build one of the strongest and broadest intellectual property rights (IPR) portfolios in the wireless industry.

Main research areas

• Analytics
• Cloud 
• Content transformation
• Digital commercial print
• Immersive interaction
• Information management 
• Intelligent infrastructure 
• Sustainability 

• Sensing and Data Intelligence
• New User Interface
• High Performance Mobile Platform
• Cognitive Radio

Number of patents

HP's patent portfolio for micro- and nanoelectronics has been named the strongest in the U.S., according to an independent survey^[4].

Nokia now owns approximately 11,000 patented innovations and its global patent portfolio includes approximately 42,000 patents and patent applications. Nokia files approximately 1,000 new patent applications annually^[5]. About one half of Nokia's essential patents originate from Nokia Research Center^[6].

Some recent  great inventions

• Mscape toolkit for creating location-based games, tours, experiences  (2007)
• Hybrid chip architecture for low-power, high-performance computing (2007)
• Smart skin patch for painless injections (2007)
• Self-aligned imprint lithography (2008)
• The fourth basic element in integrated circuits: Memristor (2008)

• Linked Internet UI Concept introduces an innovative mobile UI paradigm to facilitate multiple service usage (2009)
• Explore and Share ultra-fast wireless data transfer concept (2009)
• Health Radar a mobile based near real time system to track the spread of diseases (2009)

Persons (famous and outstanding)

Fast company has selected Prith Banerjee, Senior Vice President of Research for HP, in its "Most Creative People in Business 2009" list (as an a leader whom job is to gaze into the $150 million crystal ball that is HP Labs and see what the future holds)

Fast company has selected Rebecca Allen, Director of Nokia Research Center Hollywood and Nokia Research Center Cambridge U.S. in its "Most Creative People in Business 2010" list (as an international artist working in 3-D computer graphics, music video and video games and much more, Rebecca's work has been featured globally)