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SPOTLIGHTS:
clients & industry contributions
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Due to the confidentiality of most of our client relationships and work, below is a partial, public list of "the company we keep". This list includes enterprise and recent startup clients, as well as past and other spinoffs, spinouts, licensees, and ventures with PARC contributions.
To see a list of clients and at-a-glance overview of PARC today, please download our fact sheet.
BASF
materials and display prototyping
BASF creates the chemistry for materials and other component products that enable multiple industry applications. With the goal of expanding beyond its existing business into new areas, the company worked with PARC to integrate transistors for backplanes and displays using BASF's portfolio of organic chemistry-based materials targeted at display manufacturers.
related:
- Enabling value-added offerings for new market [case study]
Dentsu
ethnography services beyond marketing insight
Dentsu, Inc. holds the largest share of the Japanese advertising market and is ranked in the top 5 agency companies by Advertising Age. Dentsu Marketing Insight advances corporations. research processes and solutions with marketing research conducted for more than 5,000 projects annually. Going beyond typical market research and findings, PARC's ethnography services for Dentsu and Dentsu Marketing Insight will deliver extensive understanding of human behavior, in-depth insights, and comprehensive outlooks on people's lives/ contexts.
related:
- PARC Collaborates With Dentsu and Dentsu Marketing Insight... [news release]
DNP
rich media technology & more
Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd. worked with PARC to develop and deploy a context- and activity-aware system that recommends information about local area activities by matching the consumer's location, time of day, personal tastes, and more.
related:
Dowa
UVLEDs
Dowa Electronics Materials Co., Ltd. acquired patents and capabilities to manufacture and develop a new category of UV-LED based products.
related:
Fujitsu
ubiquitous computing
Fujitsu Limited and PARC engaged in a multi-year joint research and co-development agreement for ubiquitous computing, as well as for other technology expertise and services. PARC also helped Fujitsu establish a Social Science Center inside Fujitsu's system development organization, helping them apply and especially adapt ethnography methods for their organizational operations and culture. Fujitsu offers ethnographic fieldwork as a service to its customers, with the goal of making visible its customers' business processes, as well as to train its own technology-oriented engineers in social science methods.
related:
- Pioneering Ubiquitous Information Services (Fujitsu Journal) [article reprint]
LG Chem Power
battery management systems
PARC and LG Chem Power (LGCPI), a subsidiary of LG Chem, have been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to enter award negotiations for developing an optically based smart monitoring system prototype targeting batteries for electric vehicles (EVs). The system will use PARC's compact wavelength-shift detection technology and machine learning/sensor network expertise -- part of PARC's optics and optoelectronics and intelligent automation work -- to enable effective real-time performance management and optimized battery design. Capabilities will range from inferring state and health information to predicting remaining life, and the resulting commercial EV-grade battery module with embedded optical sensors and readout unit will undergo industry-standard validation at LGCPI's facilities. These innovations will significantly improve performance and help reduce costs of next-generation energy storage technologies.
related:
- Selected by ARPA-E for $4M+ award for Advanced Management And Protection Of Energy-Storage Devices [diagram]
Motorola
conversation analysis study
PARC is working with Motorola Solutions on contextual intelligence technologies. PARC also helped Motorola, Inc. with an ethnography-style study to investigate sharing practices among family and friends.
related:
- PARC Power of 10: open innovation - client stories [video]
- PARC showcases business models, not products, at 10 year anniversary [in the news]
- Using conversational insights to guide new products [case study]
NEC
human interfaces
NEC Corporation and PARC, along with Carnegie Mellon University, collaborated to support easy-to-use human interfaces for NEC design/evaluation processes, tools, and products. In a separate engagement, PARC also worked with NEC Display Solutions, Ltd.
related:
- NEC Reinforces Human Interface Research and Development [client news release]
- Going beyond usability and incremental innovation to target new markets [case study]
P&G
consumer electronics
P&G, the world's largest consumer products company, is a recognized leader in open innovation, developing external partnerships through its Connect+Develop program with the aim of accelerating the rate and efficiency of innovation delivery. When P&G identified compelling growth opportunities in the areas of consumer electronics, it also recognized the need for additional expertise beyond in-house capabilities to help deliver on those opportunities. PARC brought to the table a breadth of expertise and ability to innovate within industry constraints and market economics. Together, P&G and PARC have worked on prototype development, technology evaluation, and product roadmapping.
related:
Samsung
future networking technology
Building on their relationship from other joint hardware and software projects over the past 5 years, Samsung & PARC recently entered into a new engagement targeted at advancing the state of the art in future communications and networking technologies. PARC is one of the partners of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, focused on helping the company achieve its mission of leading the digital convergence movement.
related:
- Emerging Network Consortium Brings Industries Together to Innovate with Content-Centric Networking (CCN) [news release]
- CCN now supports Android
Sony
mobile telepresence
Leading technology and entertainment company Sony Corporation worked with PARC to strengthen its capabilities in developing products. The company wanted to gain a deeper understanding of customer practices and uncover unmet needs in the area of mobile telepresence. PARC ethnographers identified an emerging multi-connected content-sharing and communication phenomenon, which they dubbed "channel blending", and recommended specific technology opportunities for Sony to take advantage of it.
related:
- The channel blending (vs. multitasking) phenomenon and opportunities [post]
- Uncovering new ways people use technology to connect [case study]
Sun Microsystems / acquired by Oracle
interconnects for high-speed servers
To maintain a competitive advantage in their high-speed, high-end server market, Sun Microsystems, Inc. engaged PARC in co-development and ongoing collaboration around PARC's ClawConnect technology.
related:
Xerox
laser printing & more
Over the years, PARC has delivered lasting value to Xerox -- for example, laser printing became a multibillion-dollar business for Xerox. PARC is also the birthplace of Xerox's DocuPrint network printing software, the dual-beam lasers used in many Xerox products, and the scheduling software for the Xerox iGen3 Digital Production Press. Xerox continues to embed relevant PARC technology into its product and espectially its service offerings via its acquired company ACS, now known as Xerox Services.
related:
- From creation myth to the reality of innovation today [post]
- Being Open Powers a New Business Model [external post]
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"At Procter & Gamble, we have a number of strategies and programs in place for working with outside innovation partners. Our aim is to find and build partnership with companies – institutions that compliment and expand our own capabilities – so together we can achieve more. With PARC, we found broad-based, deep technical knowledge, a variety of key skills in a single place, and a successful track record of working with industry partners. They understand our business and are very responsive to client needs – very important as we try to accelerate our growth." — Ed Sawicki, Associate Director, P&G Global Business Development
"By partnering with an outside institution like PARC, it forced us to consider ideas that might have been dismissed had they been born internally." — Hitoshi Matsumoto, President, Fujitsu Laboratories America