Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  What Money Can't Buy (10 Dec 2004) And what of its megastar researchers? They aren't toiling on the latest Longhorn bell or whistle -- but neither are they pursuing anything with apparent immediate commercial potential. Jim Gray is developing the "World Wide Telescope," an Internet database that, Microsoft says, will eventually host "the entire world's astronomy data." Gary Starkweather is refining his design for a circular, "super panovision" computer monitor. Gordon Bell has spent his time recently on MyLifeBits, an online database aggregating all of his personal information, including 20,000 documents, 60,000 emails, 15,000 photos, and all of his music and videos. Gates says he's content with that approach. "The market will tell us if we're ahead of our time," he says. "That's okay." But is it really? Experts in innovation argue that Microsoft just isn't investing enough in the sort of offensive innovation that should define its future. And the research it does do seems wildly inefficient. Over the past five years, Microsoft has spent an average of $9 million per patent, nearly twice the average for its software peer group. (In July, the company told analysts it would aim to double the number of patents it seeks. But in light of Microsoft's campaign to reconcile intellectual property disputes in the European Union and with competitors such as Sun Microsystems, this appears to reflect legal strategy as much as a renewed zeal to improve the research effort itself.) Article URL: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/89/microsoft.html Read 36 more articles from Fast Company sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: A Meaningful Read: Rules of Play reviewed     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy