Engineering is really hard, really important work. The last thing I would want to do is be mis-interpreted as saying something that diminishes the importance or difficulty of engineering. Engineering involves taking a collection of ideas and turning them into something that people can use — and use reliably, cost-effectively, scalably, conveniently.

Innovation is more related to the ideas themselves. SeaDragon was a startup that was acquired by Microsoft. Its ideas — its prototype — may not have been ready for prime time, but the ideas were there. Photosynth is a combination of SeaDragon’s ideas with those embodied in PhotoTourism, a research project joint between University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering (graduate student Noah Snavely and professor Steve Seitz) and Microsoft Research (Rick Szeliski). PhotoTourism, too, wasn’t ready for prime time — there was a lot of work to do, and the insight to use the SeaDragon technology to make it a streaming/web app rather than a PC app was important. But the real innovation was embodied in PhotoTourism.

Now, an important question is whether Microsoft, without Live Labs, would have moved in either of these two interesting directions. The answer may well be “no.” A drawback of Microsoft’s “product group” structure is that if something doesn’t fit directly within the domain of a specific product group, its value may not be recognized. That’s a problem, and it’s not something I’m capable of addressing. Also, there surely are a number of areas where Live Labs truly has innovated. My only point here is to suggest that the two examples of Live Labs innovation cited in the post aren’t really on target.