Hewlett Packard’s spending on research and development isn’t a good predictor of innovation at the company, Philip McKinney, the vice president and chief technology officer of H-P’s personal systems group said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal Friday. Mr. McKinney was responding to IBM CEO Samuel Palisano’s recent remarks about what he sees as H-P’s lack of inventiveness.

“You need to look at what kind of revenue growth, what kind of margin growth you can generate off your R&D spend. Let that be the measurement ,” Mr. McKinney said. “When you’ve got 47,000 engineers, 450 PhD researchers at H-P Labs, and a culture that Bill [Hewlett] and Dave [Packard] established when H-P was created – that culture is still there,” he added.

Mr. McKinney also discussed the future of 3-D technology, saying he expects 3-D to grow more in the consumer market in the next two years. But in 2013, he said, 3-D will become more prominent in the business space, citing H-P’s work with a health care provider on 3-D medical applications as an example.

When asked about the recent spate of M&A activity in tech, Mr. McKinney said he thinks tech companies will be focused on acquisitions in security solutions in the near future. “Right now everyone’s focused on cloud computing, as obviously we are with 3PAR. But cloud computing and security solutions go hand in hand. When customers think about their data living in a cloud, they get nervous, so you need systems in place to keep that secure.”

By Lauren Goode

original post: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/09/24/h-p-tech-officer-talks-rd-spending-3-d-technology/