Q&A: Powering Agilent's Future Through Breakthrough Technologies

Agilent Labs' new leader, Darlene Solomon, talks about the purpose and future of Agilent Laboratories, Agilent's central research organization

Since becoming director of Agilent Labs in October 2003, Darlene Solomon has embarked on an ambitious mission to revitalize the Labs to better focus on emerging technology trends and innovative breakthroughs. With the new purpose and strategies in place, Solomon now shares what she sees in Agilent Labs' future.

Darlene, what is your vision of the Agilent Labs of the future?
Agilent Labs will be at the leading edge of technology, providing clear and compelling value for Agilent. Agilent Labs staff will continue to be leaders in their fields, confident in risk-taking and in tackling the most difficult problems. We will balance the near and longer-term, providing technologies that, when commercialized, dramatically improve quality of life. And we will achieve these goals while keeping our own healthy balance between our work and other life priorities. There is clearly a lot that goes into realizing that vision.

What is Agilent Labs' purpose and how will you go about accomplishing it?
Agilent Labs' fundamental purpose is to power Agilent's future through breakthrough technology. There are a few keywords within this purpose statement that help to explain how we will go about accomplishing it. The choice of the word "power" is about providing technology that makes a difference. While everyone at the Labs is driven to work on cutting-edge technology, a large portion of that technology should ultimately have business impact. This means creating new businesses for Agilent as well as powering revenue and market share growth in Agilent's current businesses.

	"The Labs' role is to identify the high-risk technologies that will solve the problems that have the greatest value to customers and the world at large."

Compared to the R&D that occurs in Agilent's business groups, what is unique to the Labs is a focus on the "future" and how we choose which problems to address. Agilent Labs is able to do very high-risk technology and in many cases very fundamental science and engineering. The Labs' role is to identify the high-risk technologies that will solve the problems that have the greatest value to customers and the world at large. We constantly ask ourselves if we are working on the tough research problems that if solved will make a breakthrough contribution. This is where the term "breakthrough technology" comes into play. To solve these problems requires the right set of complementary research skills and an environment where researchers are supported, empowered and know they can make a difference.

Are you launching any new research programs?
Certainly we will continue the research we are doing in support of Agilent's existing businesses, but new business creation is very important and an area where we will focus relatively more effort. In terms of new research, we have identified a set of highly interdisciplinary themes that offer important new business opportunities for Agilent if given additional focus and investment. The themes (see below) represent a broad spectrum of markets and technologies and many are currently early in their development. All build on competencies across the Labs.

Each of these areas reflects key trends that we believe will be increasingly important on the time-scale of Agilent Labs' research. Some of these areas, for example nanotechnology, wireless, systems biology and energy and the environment have been widely identified by leading science and technology research institutes as drivers of change in the future. Others like home healthcare delivery and developing market opportunities are areas whose importance is being driven by changes in demographics and education. Sensor network technology has broad application for the monitoring and control of the human environment. The key is in enabling the sensors and in developing a compelling business model to leverage into developing wireless and Internet infrastructures.

There have been isolated efforts along many of the themes such as sensor networks, but we do not yet have an integrated strategy or shared view of the market in Agilent's future. In homeland security, we have made a clear shift. Until now, we have looked at homeland security as a secondary market opportunity and have largely leveraged technology investments focused on other markets into this market. Today we are developing technologies with homeland security as the primary market application and if there is additional business leverage, that's great. Other areas like home healthcare are new for Agilent but high on our list to explore.

Agilent's broad technology base can contribute to all of the areas listed. Agilent Labs already has valuable experience in several of the themes. The judicious selection of where Labs investments can have the highest impact, decisions on how and with whom to partner, and on-going projections about how and when these markets will evolve will be an important responsibility for me and the Labs leadership team.

At this point, I do not have a strong bias in favor of any of these themes. Clearly, all of these areas are going to be important, and the key is in the quality and potential impact of the innovations our research teams will contribute and develop in the years ahead. I'm most excited when we can provide a breakthrough technology contribution that is the basis for sustained competitive differentiation in the marketplace and therefore has significant business impact. These are the breakthroughs that change paradigms about how technology and capability will evolve.

What are areas ripe for technology breakthroughs in the next 10 years?
Looking out to the next 10 years, we have many programs of high potential impact underway in support of our current businesses. These include:

• New optical and electronic technologies
• Components and subassemblies to support high-volume consumer electronics
• Broadband and high-speed computer optical interconnects
• Integrated hardware and software solutions to reduce costs and improve performance in automated testing of increasingly powerful devices
• New measurement technologies advancing capabilities across the spectrum in optics and electronics
• Technologies that will support next generation and beyond for wireline and wireless communications
• High-performance detection platforms and associated sample preparation and informatics technologies to advance the life sciences in research and healthcare

Building on my comments about the Labs' focus areas, many of the most important problems of the future will be solved by multi-disciplinary approaches -- even more so than today -- and this is a major competitive strength for Agilent that we can exploit through the Labs. Examples are in areas such as the biorevolution and nanotechnology, as well as in the global concerns about energy and the environment. We need approaches that lead to technology breakthroughs that aren't just aimed at a U.S.-centric world but at developing global markets as well. To solve these problems is going to require interdisciplinary approaches where people come together with a very good understanding of customer needs, what the breakthrough changes in paradigms will be, as well as deep technical expertise in their area and across domains. Agilent Labs does this exceptionally well by working within our organization, connecting to our marketing, field and business development functions, and being active in many leading scientific and policy organizations. The themes we discussed earlier are of course representative of the areas ripe for breakthroughs. Ten years on the one hand sounds like a long time, but it is really not that long considering the high-risk projects that we undertake. It is exactly where we need to be focusing for the future.

How will Agilent Labs be different five years from now?
Agilent Labs is a great organization of extremely capable and committed scientists, engineers and research managers -- this will not change! However, we have recently survived a couple of very challenging years where we had to downsize the organization, and in some cases focus nearer-term and realign program priorities following dramatic changes in some of our markets.

Looking forward, Agilent Labs will continue to provide technologies to fuel growth in our existing businesses -- test and measurement, semiconductor products, automated test, and life sciences and chemical analysis -- but we will also provide the technology options that will lead to the continual reinvention of the company through new business creation. To achieve high-growth, a company must continually reinvent itself. I found it quite striking to learn that the median age of an S&P 500 company in 1995 was 12 years. Agilent Labs is uniquely charged with new business creation in Agilent, which is a big challenge. Many companies have failed to do this, and as noted by Clayton Christenson, author of The Innovators' Dilemma, many routinely are not able to look beyond the existing market and anticipate new and disruptive technologies. Inherently contribution aimed at new business creation is relatively high in uncertainty and therefore risky compared to that for our existing businesses, and accordingly, any given investment has a lower probability of success.

In the future, there will be more emphasis on portfolio management, which involves developing a clear picture of how we are making our research investments. This is a challenging task given the broad spectrum of research that occurs in the Labs. What we are doing is looking out into the future along the timescale of the Labs' research -- some things that we do are two to three years out but many others are five to ten years out -- and identifying areas that we think are going to be significant and that therefore need more research investment. We are also setting goals for more fluid allocation of resources and identifying the new skills that we want to bring into the Labs in order to accelerate progress towards future priorities. Beyond our current staffing programs, I intend to explore a sabbatical program for our technical staff and a formal post-doctoral program to bring in new skills and fresh ideas and to increase our external network. We need to cultivate even more cross-disciplinary and cross-organizational awareness and understanding of the key problems that make sense for Agilent to solve. With a very tough couple of years in the marketplace now behind us, the time is right for a shift towards higher risk research as well as placing more emphasis on fueling Agilent's future as a diversified company. This means creating technologies that are the basis for completely new markets just like optical navigation was a few years ago.

What kind of impact are you expecting the Labs to have?
I am very proud of Agilent Labs' history of contribution. In recent years, many central research labs have been either scaled back or have changed their agenda and funding to become a direct extension of their company's applied research. Because of the history of technologies that have contributed to Agilent's growth, the commitment to the Labs has remained strong over the same timeframe. Still, as projects move through their life cycle, I'd like us to pay greater attention to the expected business impact, which includes thinking more broadly about additional applications for that technology beyond the initial motivation for the investment.

Agilent's goal as a high-growth company is to have a compound-annual-growth-rate on the order of 10 to 12 percent. While the investment in Agilent Labs is a relatively small portion of company's overall R&D investment at 8 percent, I believe that we could on average provide technologies that are the basis for potentially one third, or perhaps one half, of that growth for Agilent.

What about Agilent Labs would you like to keep? What would you like to change?
Agilent Labs is a world-class research organization and an absolutely great place to work. We have the enviable combination of a very deep set of technical expertise, a broad base of technology disciplines and employees who enjoy the richness of a broad science and engineering environment. I'd like the Labs to continue to be the place where leaders in their fields choose to work. We also will keep our values from Hewlett-Packard -- trust and respect, achievement and contribution, uncompromising integrity and teamwork.

In terms of what to change, I am committed to encouraging our researchers to take more risk by supporting and rewarding risk-taking. To help Agilent through the economic downturn of the last couple of years, we focused more of our research on Agilent's near-term product introductions. The result is that 2004 will be one of Agilent's best years for new products. I also plan to ensure that researchers have discretionary time for creative thinking beyond their planned commitments. Everyone today is stretched very thin and we need to not only set our priorities so that in fact they do get accomplished, but we also need to ensure that there is this additional time which is so important for that serendipitous conversation or that chance to think further into the future, which leads to some of the biggest breakthroughs. To create this discretionary time will require clearer focus and accountability on top priorities -- we are all very good at understanding and communicating what we think are the important objectives, but we need to get better at articulating what is less important.

One thing that I'd like to continue is what I call "technology integrity." We are very focused and committed to the research that we do, but it's very important that we are clear about its expected impact in the context of a rapidly changing external world. We need to be able to recognize when we do have a real contribution to make and alternatively when that contribution isn't as significant as we thought it would be. Sometimes partnering with another organization would make more sense. We are a great organization to partner with and because we know that we can't do it all ourselves, we are open to hearing about opportunities to collaborate.

	"[Agilent Labs is] very good at focusing on technology contribution and addressing problems that contribute to advancing the quality of life on many different levels."

How will you foster innovation at Agilent Labs?
It comes down to the right work environment. Many very capable people can solve the relatively easy problems, but to solve the really tough problems requires an environment where people are very focused on what they are doing. They need to be able to concentrate on their research with minimal distraction from unproductive activities. The most profound innovation is often the result of two people just happening to talk to each other and starting to think that maybe there's an overlap or an opportunity that initially would have seemed disparate or remote. Encouraging provocative external and internal seminar speakers and other types of events where employees come together and get a chance to work and interact socially with others not in their immediate technology domain or work area can often be the basis for our most exciting contributions. For example, Agilent just announced a microfluidic device that will improve performance and usability of our mass spectrometer products for bioscientists identifying proteins in complex mixtures. The disruptive technology that led to this product, laser-ablation-based fabrication of polymer substrates to create microfluidic device architectures, began in 1993 with a conversation between a life scientist in what is now Agilent Labs and a research engineer in HP's then Printing Technology department.

What makes Agilent Labs different than other central research organizations?
One of our fundamental strengths and what makes the Labs unique is our ability to capitalize on cross-domain synergy. This is fundamental to Agilent's business model as a diversified company. We also have a core competency in transferring technologies to Agilent's businesses. We are always asking ourselves how we can improve the transfer process, but the truth is that this is another one of those differentiators that has led to the sustained success of Agilent's central research lab. We are very good at focusing on technology contribution and addressing problems that contribute to advancing the quality of life on many different levels. Finally, another strength is that we have people who care deeply about their research and about the people around them and that makes for a very positive research environment.

	Biography for Darlene Solomon Vice President, Agilent Technologies Director, Agilent Laboratories

What do you find most exciting about your new role?
Most exciting is the chance to continually discover the diversity of incredibly innovative people and research programs going on in the Labs. In addition to the great research being formally investigated and developed, there are emerging ideas that our researchers work on in addition to their primary responsibilities. I enjoy discussing these ideas and then seeing what we can do to move forward.

At a business level, what is most exciting is that Agilent Labs is such an important part of Agilent's business model. Beyond the obvious operational efficiencies, as a diversified company, we can unlock synergies across the Labs and across Agilent's businesses that have the potential to directly impact our value as a diversified company compared to what would be possible for a set of "pure play" companies in similar fields. It comes down to how much synergy and how much leverage and efficiency can be obtained across an organization. In the end, Agilent Labs is the one place where all of the technologies that support Agilent's businesses come together. The opportunity to demonstrate that value in terms revenue and growth is incredibly motivating. We have the chance to make a huge impact on how Agilent will grow and continually reinvent itself into the future.

Tell us about your interests.
Most important is my family, which includes my husband and two children ages 11 and 14, so most time outside of work is focused on them. I enjoy working out with my husband because it is nice time for us together, as well as great stress and calorie reduction. We participate in a variety of activities, including working out in the gym, swimming, tennis and yoga. My days have gotten so full that my husband and I get up very early in the morning -- well, 5:30 am is early by my normal standards -- to have that time for ourselves to work out before the rest of the day begins. I also very much enjoy cooking and eating interesting foods, and simply laying on a beach in Hawaii.

Biography: Darlene Solomon

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