Free flow of ideas
    自由的创意
   

 Customer Co-innovation is one aspect of HP Labs' multi-faceted commitment to Open Innovation, notes Banerjee.
    与客户共同创新是惠普实验室致力于开放创新的一个新方向，Banerjee指出。

    "Open Innovation recognizes that there are a lot of very creative ideas and smart people outside your organization," he says, "and it greatly benefits you to have a really porous wall through which externally-generated ideas can come in, and through which our own ideas can go out."
    “开放创新的思路，帮你认识到，在你的组织之外，还有很多聪明、且很有创造性想法的人，”他说，“它的存在让大家受益良多，如同一面可以被穿透的墙，外部生成的想法可以融入，内部自己的想法也可以出来。”

    In pursuit of Open Innovation, HP Labs has been working with academic researchers for the last four years via its Innovation Research Program (IRP) initiative. This global program supports researchers in some of the world's best technical universities. All the projects funded are relevant to HP Lab's 24 major 'big bet' research projects, allowing the lab to broaden the number of researchers working on its main areas of interest.
    在过去四年中，惠普实验室从未停止对开放创新的追求，他们通过创新研究计划（IRP）与学术研究人员一起工作。IRP作为一个全球项目，将支持那些世界顶尖大学中的研究人员。所有项目的经费，来自惠普实验室内相关的24个主要的“大赌注”研究项目，它们帮助实验室在主要感兴趣的研究领域扩大研究队伍。

    "If you think about the innovation pipeline," adds Friedrich, "the IRP feeds into the very early stages. Next, though, you want to solve a particular problem with this general set of technologies that you've developed."
    “如果考虑到创新渠道，”Friedrich补充说，“IRP将对初期科研阶段提供帮助。之后，你就可以用IRP开发出的整套技术，来解决特定的问题。”

    Customer Co-innovation offers one very powerful route to do that.
    与客户共同创新提供了一个非常强大的方法去这样做。

    "It lets us ask, for example, how an idea would play out in the financial services market place," Friedrich says. "Or how about in e-government, or healthcare, or in manufacturing? It's a huge opportunity that you could never get in a university setting, and not even within an industrial research lab without access to a customer's very particular experience, domain knowledge and business data."
    “让我们来想像一下，如何把一个很棒的创意应用到金融服务市场中，”Friedrich说。“或者应用到电子政务、医疗，又或是制造业？要知道，来自客户方面各种经验、专业知识和业务数据是非常特别的，这么好的机会是你在大学里永远没有可能得到的，甚至在那些行业研究实验室中也不可能获得。”

    Innovating in real-world conditions
    在真实世界中的创新

    Being able to use real world data sets is highly attractive for HP Labs researchers. With access to more realistic data, in real-world volumes and contexts, they're much better able to determine both the technical and business feasibility of their research.
    对于惠普实验室的研究人员来说，可以采用来自真实世界的数据进行研究，是一件非常有吸引力的事情。随着接触到更多的真实数据，他们可以更好的决定其研究的技术和商业可行性。

    And it means they're more likely to have a powerful real world impact.
    这意味着他们的研究可能会更好的贴近现实世界，从而产生更多影响。

    One Customer Co-innovation project currently underway, for example, is investigating how HP innovations in 3D displays might be used in the healthcare field.
    例如，一个正在进行的与客户共同创新项目是：研究惠普的3D显示器创新技术，如何应用于医疗领域。

    "Tens of thousands of patients die every year in US hospitals because there was a mistake made somewhere," notes Friedrich. "So we're seeing if technologies that we'd developed for the entertainment industry could be used for health care training and visualization to minimize errors."
    “在美国的医院中，每年会有成千上万的病人由于某些错误处置而死去，”Friedrich说。“所以我们正在研究，是否我们为娱乐开发的技术，可以用于医疗行业的培训和可视化，从而把错误降到最低。”

     Co-Innovation results in competitive advantage for HP customers
    共同创新为惠普客户带来竞争优势

    If Customer Co-innovation helps HP create products and services that its customers are more likely to find useful and thus pay for, those customers also gain from the collaboration.
    如果与客户共同创新项目帮助惠普创造更好、更有用的产品和服务，惠普的客户就会愿意为此付钱，而这些客户也从协作中获益。

    They get to learn about new technologies long before their competitors and to understand how those innovations might impact their business in the future. And by co-innovating, they have a chance to influence how those technologies are developed into product and service offerings.
    他们比其竞争对手掌握了更先进的技术，并更了解那些创新技术将在未来，如何对其业务产生影响。通过共同创新，他们将有机会去影响一些技术的开发，并由此影响那些用于未来的产品和服务。

     "The customers that we're co-innovating with have innovation as a high priority," adds Friedrich. "They have their own research that this fits into, so it's a win-win for both them and HP."
    “正在与我们共同创新的客户具有优先级，”Friedrich补充说。“因为他们也有与之对应的研究，这对他们和惠普来说，是个双赢的结果。”

    A new conduit for research
    一个新的研究渠道

    The first set of formal HP Labs Customer Co-innovation projects will wrap up by the end of the year. While it's too early to share the results of any specific collaborations, Banerjee reports that the program has already inspired enthusiasm among both customers and HP's own business units.
    惠普实验室首批正式的与客户共同创新项目将在年底前完成。虽然现在谈论分享具体的协作成果还为时过早，Banerjee称，但这个项目已经激发了客户和惠普业务部门两方面的积极性。

    Most industrial research labs work only with their business unit partners to bring their innovations ideas to market, he notes. That will continue to be the principal conduit for HP Labs innovations, too.
    不少行业研究实验室与其业务部门合作，把他们的创新想法带到市场上。他表示，这也将是惠普实验室今后创新的主要渠道。

    "But our overall aim is to create innovative products and services to make an impact to our customers," Banerjee says. "And the Customer Co-innovation program offers us another unique, innovative, exciting and really impactful way to do that."
    “我们的总体目标是创造创新的产品和服务，并对我们的客户产生影响，”Banerjee说。“我们的与客户共同创新项目，帮助我们提供了一个独特的、创新的、令人激动的和真正有影响力的方式，来做到这一点。”