We all are surrounded by so much Lock-in and Defend & Extend Management that sometimes it can be hard to find White Space. 

On 3/19 the Chicago Tribune reported the creation of some White Space that could be very valuable (read article here.)  Microsoft and Intel each invested $10million to open research centers at the University of Illinois in Champaign, and a like amount at the University of California in Berkeley.  These centers have the openness to pursue new approaches to parallel computing which could improve everything from solving complex problems to identifying your most important text messages.

The key attributes of this White Space include: (1) permission to pursue any solution likely to succeed.  Located at universitites, these projects are not hide-bound to previous company technology investments.  University based research gives the profs and grad students the lattitude to seek out solutions which could well be overlooked in a traditional R&D organization.  (2) Resources to actually make a difference.  Regularly I hear about small companies trying to raise $200,000 or $500,000 for research.  Today, that money goes only a short distance.  $10million provides enough funds to really seek out a solution.  And, (3) not all the eggs are in one basket.  Investors selected 2 different locations to pursue the objectives, allowing failure while not completely jeapardizing results.  Investing in 2 universities demonstrates recognition that no one can predict where success will occur, so it’s smart to have multiple approaches.

You could challenge these investments as perhaps lacking sufficient Return on Investment justification.  But, recall that Internet Explorer was a product developed as a direct result of Mosaic, developed at the University of Illinois, and eventually licensed to Microsoft through a company called Spyglass.  And IE had an extremely favorable ROI for Microsoft.  White Space should not be a "throw away your money" pursuit.  But it is OK to invest in areas where you cannot fully predict the result – and rather just the direction.  If the outcome from this $20million (which was matched by $16million of state funding) is even 1/20th as successful as IE the value will be HUGE.