With HP's customers' help, HP Labs researchers are developing the next generation of HP products and services
    采用惠普的客户帮助体系，惠普实验室正在开发新一代的惠普产品和服务

Every year several hundred of HP's largest customers visit HP Labs to hear its vision of the future.
    每年，都有数以百计的惠普公司大客户访问惠普实验室，倾听它对未来的看法。

Until recently, though, says Senior VP of Research and Director of HP Labs, Prith Banerjee, "we'd show them our most blazingly cool stuff, and they'd say, 'Oh I really want this.' And we'd have to say 'Sorry, you can only buy from HP's current products and services.'
    惠普高级副总裁暨惠普实验室主任Prith Banerjee说：“曾经，那些大客户在惠普实验室看到我们最炫最酷的发明，然后他们说，‘我真的想要这个。’而我们不得不说：‘对不起，你们只能买到惠普公司现有的产品和服务。’”

That's no longer always the case, however. Under a new program that's recently been formalized, HP Labs is now working directly with some of its most forward-thinking customers to jointly innovate the next generation of HP products and services.
    这种事情今后将发生改变。按照一项最近开始的计划，惠普实验室将直接和一些最有超前想法的客户一起工作，联合创新下一代的惠普产品和服务。

A number of projects are already in progress, tackling challenges as diverse as product personalization in the financial services sector, safety in the health care industry and using data analysis to gauge customer sentiment in consumer product markets.
    一些项目已经在进行当中，处理各式各样的挑战——金融服务业中的个性化，保健行业中的安全性，以及采用数据分析，来判断客户在消费类产品市场上的观点。

"We call it Customer Co-innovation," says Banerjee. "Essentially, it's another innovation methodology for doing our job, which is to turn research ideas into reality.
    “我们称其为与客户共同创新，”Banerjee说。“本质上，这是用另外一种创新方式完成我们的工作，即把研究成果变为现实。”

Collaboration fosters accelerated technology transfer
    协作促进技术转化

Working directly to apply research results with customers is not an entirely new concept for HP.The company's approach to cloud computing, for example, was shaped in part by an HP Labs collaboration with animation company DreamWorks. And an ongoing Labs project with Shell Oil is offering a significant proof of concept for CeNSE, HP's new, high-precision sensor network technology.
    对惠普公司来说，让客户直接参与到研究工作中并不是件新鲜事。例如，惠普与梦工厂在云计算方面就在进行合作。惠普实验室还正在和壳牌石油合作一个项目，该项目证明了CeNSE——惠普公司新款高精度传感器网络技术——的价值。

Those early initiatives were a great success, says Rich Friedrich, Director of Strategic Innovation and Research Services at HP Labs, and the person responsible for leading the Customer Co-innovation Program.
    惠普实验室战略创新和研究服务总监Rich Friedrich负责领导与客户共同创新计划，他表示，一些早先的计划已获得很大的成功。

"By co-innovating with our customers in this way," Friedrich explains, "we found we could really get an understanding of what their needs were, so we could fine tune the technology we were offering them. And that gave us a big head start over our competitors. Now we're building new capabilities that no one in the world's ever built before."
    “通过与我们的客户共同创新，”Friedrich解释说，“我们可以真正理解什么是客户所需，进而调整我们提供的技术，以便为他们更好的服务。并且，这使得我们领先于竞争对手。现在，我们正在发展新的、从未有过的技术能力。”

Going forward, Friedrich adds, HP Labs will run about a dozen such projects at a time, each lasting up to a year.
    展望未来，Friedrich补充说，惠普实验室将一次开展十二个这样的项目，每个为期最长一年。

Each project must have executive sponsorship from both the customer and a customer-facing business unit within HP. Both are typically delighted to be involved, Friedrich reports.
    每个项目必须有来自客户，以及惠普内部直接服务该客户的业务部门的支持。这两者都是典型的愿意参与者，Friedrich说。

"There's no guarantee that there will be a project or service at the end, because we're not a product or a service group," he explains, "but typically these things do tend to accelerate technology transfer and that's something our largest customers get really excited about."
    “在项目结束的时候，没人保证一定会有一个完整的产品或是服务，因为我们不是服务部门，也不是在造产品，”他解释说，“通常这件事会加速技术转化，并且总有些成果，能让我们的大客户们感到兴奋。”