NATHAN MYHRVOLD PhD ORAL HISTORY - The Computerworld ...

So Office 97, our office productivity package, it includes word processing and spread
sheet data base that has a grammar checker developed by our national language
group. It’s the best grammar checker in the world. It’s the first one that corrects
your grammar while you type. And I would like to highlight this one because they
call these programs word processors, but until Office ‘97, they weren’t word
processors, they were character processors. They helped you arrange characters on a
page and get them lined up, but the program had no understanding that those strings
of characters were words, that those words were organized into sentences and
paragraphs, and that there was structure meaning. What we need the computer to
be is not just your scribe in helping you remember where the characters go.
Computers should be your copy editors, your partner in writing that helps you
understand the deep structure of language and it helps apply that to something.
That’s really what it should be about, and that’s what it’s going to be about because
we have a very strong set of research efforts supporting our product. This is true for
a whole bunch of other projects, and our operating systems in games, every part of
the company has really benefited, so we have both examples of doing great work and
hiring great people, and having an effect with products.
DA: That’s very interesting to hear your strategy. I’ve studied research
organizations for a long time. One of the problems usually is the hand off. When
the researcher develops this idea, he thinks it’s great, he publishes it, or hands it off,
or writes a reports, and he goes to the next idea. And some people say, “No, you
need to keep at the research, keep with the idea through product development, or
use a certain kind of plan.” What is your plan for making that transition between
research and product development?
NM: I am proud to say we have no process for this. Most of the best things in life
don’t have a formal process. Most people meet their spouse in some ad hoc basis.
There’s not some formal process where you apply, and you do this, and you do that.
Most breakthroughs, although they may occur by people that have degrees, aren’t as
a result of completing a certain number of degree requirements and then the
breakthrough happens. And transferring technology from a research group over to
products isn’t something that happens in any single mode either, at least not here.
Sometimes it happens because Bill Gates or I will be reviewing a product group. We
will know it went on into research and say, “Hey, you should go talk to those
people.” Sometimes it happens the other way around. We tell the researchers, “You
should go see if someone wants to use this.” But it also happens because people are
friends. They get together in the hallways, or someone says, “Hey, let’s have lunch,
and let’s discuss it.”
Nathan Myhrvold
Oral History
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