One absolutely fascinating talk was by Phil Fawcett, who’s a Technology Transfer Agent at Microsoft. Phil, a 20-year veteran of Microsoft (one assumes he probably doesn’t have to work anymore!) created this job and has grown it to the point where there’s a small staff of people helping him. His goal: Get research and product people to talk to each other. Right now, half of Microsoft ideas get into release. He’d like to increase that percentage so that the $7 billion Microsoft will invest in R&D in fiscal 2004 will be best used.

Phil says technoloy transfer is a fundamentally social process for managing key technology assets, and it’s a process that requires trust. Trust and risk must be balanced using communication processes. And this is where Phil comes in. Much of his talk was about how he fosters communication among his constituencies (researchers, product groups, senior management) to create a development environment suited to product-ready research.

One point that’s a little beside the point but still interesting: Phil says that for Microsoft researchers, failure isn’t fatal. At Microsoft, the real failure is not to document what you’ve learned from a failure.

Just in case you’re curious, here are some of the Nerd Herder Methods Phil says he uses at Microsoft:

• TechFest – A technology trade show put on by researchers for the rest of Microsoft.
  
• Blitz – A 2- to 3-hour session, with new researchers or product groups doing demos every 15 minutes.
  
• Offsite – A 1- to 2-day meeting off-campus for the purpose of exchanging ideas about a topic that may lead to awareness of long-term issues, best used before initial product planning when groups are not talking to each other….need to have key influencers and key combatants there.
  
• Brainstorm/Collaboration – An exchange of ideas in a 1- to 2-hour meeting session, either to create new solutions or to discuss trade-offs between several alternatives.
  
• Heartbeat Meeting – Sessions of 3 to 4 “focused” researchers and product group staffers who meet every 1 to 2 weeks to drive action items within their respective divisions and monitor level engagement between the two groups.