How IBM's eight labs around the world figure in Lou Gerstner's plans to achieve consistent double-digit growth -- and to join GE as a $100 billion concern.
Why Xerox's famed Palo Alto Research Center is vying to resuscitate its company's lagging fortunes by sending anthropologists into the field to study the hidden ways people really work.
What Hewlett-Packard will do without its original instrument business, recently spun off as Agilent Technologies. The business was central to HP Labs' MC2 philosophy of merging research expertise in measurement, computation, and communication -- and its departure removed a lot that was unique about HP.
How the November 1999 federal court finding that Microsoft operates a monopoly hinders the Seattle giant's acquisition plans and makes it increasingly vital for nine-year-old Microsoft Research to lead the way in innovating from within. Could this be the next great lab for the twenty-first century?
With authority and undaunted optimism about the underlying vitality of the research process, Buderi discusses these issues and reveals the future of some of the world's best and most powerful companies.