Sun labs and HP labs:

Sun Labs:

Sun Microsystems Laboratories is collaborating with 28 universities around the world as it strives to enhance Internet and network security, improve search capabilities for music files, and create new programming languages.

Sun Labs, which developed the hugely successful Java programming language, claims to have one of the highest rates of transferring technologies developed in the labs to commercialized company products. Since the lab was established 15 years ago, its technologies have earned more than $4 billion for Sun.

And while the lab's researchers comprise about 1 percent of Sun's 16,000 engineers, they earn about 12 percent of the patents awarded annually to the company.

Still, Sun Labs' funding decreased after the dot-com bust, mirroring the decline in nationwide R&D spending in 2002 driven largely by corporate cutbacks.

Saffo, of the Institute for the Future, says corporate research labs are "hanging in there, but they're not doing well.'' While such labs can claim the creation of the scientific calculator, the Macintosh computer and the Windows interface, there haven't been any big breakthroughs recently.

"The irony, and I think this is true for all these labs, is a lot of these companies are like Moses,'' Saffo said. "They led these industries to the Promised Land, but they're doomed to stay in the desert themselves.''

HP labs: A trim 40-year-old
A decade ago, HP Labs boasted having 1,400 employees. Today, its head count is down to about 600.