It looks like Microsoft is giving its research arm a makeover, with aims to steer away from proven endeavors like Microsoft Word and more toward ventures like HoloLens, with a reinvigorated goal of breathing new life into its projects (or like its website says, "turning ideas into reality").
A Bloomberg exclusive on the rejiggering of Microsoft's research wing revealed that, in an effort to get on par with competitors like Facebook and Google, Microsoft's aim is to shift the structure of the department, with a focus on synergy rather than isolated cells.
"The company's research group was set up in isolation from the product teams to allow researchers to envision the future without worrying about how their inventions will make money or fit into the company's mission," CEO Satya Nadella told Bloomberg. But that structure hasn't exactly met their needs in comparison to the output of their competition, so instead, the company has integrated it with more customer and product-based wings.
The idea came to Nadella in 2014 in preparation for his first presentation within the company, wherein he would have to have a simultaneous translator to successfully convey his message. That idea snowballed into Microsoft's current Translator feature on Skype — and Nadella's new plan for synthesizing his research wing, which started a few months later after moving over 1,000 employees to the MSR NeXT group that, as the Verge points out, is "designed to work on projects that aren't just pure research and have a greater impact."
We'll still have to wait and see exactly what Microsoft has in store with its research restructure, but if Cortana and HoloLens are any indication, it might be well worth it.
Via: Bloomberg
Photo: Mike Mozart | Flickr
