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Xerox Shows Off Future Tech And Tries To Better Define Itself
Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek, May 1, 2008
PARC excerpts from the article:
At the Palo Alto Research Center, the past is present: Horses graze amid tall grass on Coyote Road, as if to remind visitors of Silicon Valley before the silicon age, of the Old West and the pioneer spirit that's still evident in many of California's current innovators.
The past is present at PARC -- formerly Xerox PARC, but spun off as a wholly owned subsidiary of Xerox in 2002 -- quite literally: The lab is littered with reminders of innovations created by its researches. These include the laser printer, Ethernet networking, and the graphic user interface for computers.
Yet this past is something of an albatross that hangs about the necks of both Xerox and PARC. This was apparent on Tuesday at "Inside Innovation at Xerox," a media event held on Tuesday at PARC to showcase technologies that may soon emerge from the lab, such as self-erasing, reusable paper; a technique for rare cell detection;...
...Innovation isn't only a matter of corporate profits. It's valuable to society at large because advances in one field often lead to unexpected advances in another. So it is that Xerox's printing advances over the years may end up improving health care.
The Scripps-PARC Institute for Advanced Biomedical Sciences, a partnership between Scripts Research Institute and PARC formed in 2002, has combined laser printing technology with fiber optics to create a way to identify rare cells, such as cancer cells, in the bloodstream about 1,000 times faster than digital microscopy...
Such partnerships serve to underscore that PARC is an independent organization, one that is helping organizations other than Xerox innovate. That has some tangential value to Xerox, as PARC's owner: Good publicity may rub off. But PARC isn't just serving Xerox by inventing technologies for outside organizations. It's also investing technologies that could drive revenue at Xerox.
One of the more promising technologies demonstrated at Tuesday's event was self-erasing, reusable paper...
...While "Inside Innovation at Xerox" didn't entirely clarify how PARC's work would lead to happier Xerox shareholders, it did serve to illuminate the company's potential and its pioneer spirit.
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