Wedding innovation with business value: An interview with the director of HP Labs

HP Labs, the central research arm for Hewlett-Packard, forms a small but critical piece of the company’s R&D ecosystem. Prith Banerjee, director of HP Labs, leads a core group of 500 researchers, whose charge is to innovate 5, 10, and 15 years beyond the focus of the other 30,000 R&D engineers within HP. In this video interview, Banerjee discusses how he has tried to align long-range innovation projects with the current business plans and vision of the company. He also talks about the value of localizing research talent, the importance of measuring innovation, and the evolving role of corporate research labs. Lenny Mendonca, a director in McKinsey’s San Francisco office, spoke with Banerjee at HP’s headquarters, in Palo Alto, California.