Promoting Innovation

Microsoft is a significant and long-term investor in innovation in Europe to drive new software products and services, inspire new ways to use efficient IT solutions and contribute to long-term sustainable growth for our company, our partners, and the European knowledge economy. Microsoft investments focus on finding solutions to difficult computing problems and social challenges, and working in partnership with governments, communities, and other businesses to develop the innovation infrastructure throughout Europe.

To help foster an environment of continuous innovation, Microsoft has a broad range of policies, programs, and products that focus on the company's commitment to responsible and ethical business practices. These business practices promote user choice, industry opportunity, interoperability, and transparency.

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Policies 

Basic Research in Computer Science and Big Societal Challenges

Microsoft invests heavily in research and development to enable our company to be competitive and create value for our customers, partners, and shareholders. At the same time, our vision is bigger than our own success: we see a future where innovative software will help scientists, industry, and governments use technology to address big societal challenges and create new opportunities by accelerating breakthroughs in the life sciences, healthcare, environmental science, and energy efficiency.

Interoperability: Connecting People, Data, and Diverse Systems

Microsoft is dedicated to collaborating with others to support choice, industry opportunity, and interoperability. The Windows Principles provide the industry and consumers with the benefits of ongoing innovation, while creating and preserving opportunities for competition.

In February 2008, Microsoft announced a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity, and choice for developers, partners, customers, and competitors. Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and corresponding actions across its high-volume business products:

1. Ensuring open connections
2. Promoting data portability
3. Enhancing support for industry standards
4. Fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open source communities

Windows Principles: Empowering Consumer Choice and Opportunity

Microsoft developed the Windows Principles as a set of voluntary, self-regulatory guidelines to inform developers and users on the development of the Windows operating system. These principles can help provide the industry and consumers with the benefits of ongoing innovation while also creating and preserving opportunities for competition.

Intellectual Property: Enabling IP Opportunity and Innovation

Microsoft respects the intellectual property rights of other innovators and works to develop technology solutions to help protect those rights. In addition, Microsoft shares its own intellectual property to help promote innovation and to assist and inspire the creative work of others.

Accessibility: Creating Technology Solutions for All People

To deliver on the Microsoft corporate mission, Microsoft strives to build technology for everyone, including those who experience physical difficulties or disabilities. We develop software and tools that make it easier for people to see, hear, and use their personal computers, and we never stop working to make Windows an outstanding platform that other companies can use to develop accessible technologies.

Putting Human Values at the Center of Computing

Microsoft Research is at the forefront of shaping the computer science research agenda to ensure that human values and concerns are central to research and development and innovation. In 2007, Microsoft Research organized the Human-Computer Interaction 2020 conference in Spain to help define this research agenda and develop the cross-disciplinary research networks and methodologies to bring it to fruition.

Read the HCI 2020 report

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Research Lab 

Microsoft Research Cambridge, United Kingdom

Microsoft Research Cambridge (MSRC) is the Microsoft Corporation chief research laboratory in Europe and the first to be established outside the United States. With more than 100 researchers engaged in fundamental computer research at the lab, MSRC is a center for innovation and computer science research. Current projects concentrate on five areas:

• Machine learning and perception
• Programming principles and tools
• Systems and networking
• Computer mediated living
• Computational science

Microsoft Research – External Research Program

External collaboration and active participation in the international research community is a fundamental part of the Microsoft Research philosophy. Microsoft researchers collaborate with universities around the world and publish, share, and present research projects and results (more than 3,700 papers in 15 years) at prestigious conferences.

Microsoft Research attracts some of the brightest minds, but we recognize that we cannot change the world on our own. This is why we have long-standing collaborations with academic, government, and commercial institutions on a broad range of research programs. In particular, we seek to build relationships with universities, government agencies, and industry partners to enhance innovation. The initiative also encompasses a range of activities contributing to Europe's intellectual capital, including fellowships, scholarships, an award program, and a series of scientific workshops.

Joint Institutes 

Microsoft Research – University of Trento Center for Computational and Systems Biology (CoSBi), Trento, Italy

Inaugurated in December 2005, the CoSBi Center is a multidisciplinary joint venture between Microsoft Research and the University of Trento. The Center is located in Povo, a suburb of Trento, Italy. The Center's goal is to bridge the gap between computer science and biology by developing new conceptual and software tools to help unravel the logic of life.

Microsoft Research – INRIA Joint Center, Paris, France

The Microsoft Research-INRIA Joint Center was founded by INRIA (the French National Research Institute for Computer Science and Applied Mathematics), Microsoft Corporation, and Microsoft Research Cambridge. The Center's objective is to pursue fundamental long-term research in formal methods, software security, and the application of computer science research to science.

BSC-Microsoft Research Center, Barcelona, Spain

In January 2008, Microsoft Research and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) announced the creation of the NSC-Microsoft Research Center, which focuses on the way microprocessors and software for the mobile and desktop market segments will be designed and interact over the next 10 years and beyond.

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Development Centers 

Microsoft Development Center, Copenhagen (MDCC), Denmark

The Microsoft innovation presence in Europe surpasses research, whether pure or applied. The company's software development center in Vedbaek, Denmark, employs more than 700 people and is the company's largest development facility in Europe. From this campus, Microsoft Business Solutions works with Europe's developer community to produce solutions that help foster growth in the small and medium-size enterprise sector. Since the early 1980s, this division has developed a wide range of integrated, end-to-end business applications and services, helping organizations become more connected with customers, employees, partners, and suppliers.

Microsoft European Development Center (EDC), Dublin, Ireland

Today close to 500 employees work in the EDC in ten teams with a wide range of responsibilities. Some teams work on innovative software technologies like edge computing, mobile, location awareness, digital TV, malware response and more. Other teams work on localizing some of Microsoft's most successful products like Microsoft Office, Xbox, and online properties for markets around the world. The center has grown from localizing two products (MS-DOS and PC Word) into two languages in 1988 to developing more than 100 products in 27 languages today. The team supports 23 additional languages and dialects as part of the Microsoft Local Language Program.

Microsoft Development Center for Collaborative Technologies, Zurich, Switzerland

The Development Center in Zurich develops communications applications based on voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) technology to bring together various modes of communication (e-mail; instant messaging; short message service; voice/telephony; and audio, video and Web conferencing), breaking down the silos of communication and extending the unified communications experience to information workers.

Microsoft Development Center Serbia (MDCS), Belgrade, Serbia

The focus of the Belgrade Development Center is on the development of the Microsoft Tablet PC technology, the operating system built for mobile computing.

Microsoft Language Development Center (MLDC), Porto Salvo, Portugal

This Microsoft Development Center is one of five established in Europe (and the first, outside of the United States), dedicated to local language development.

FAST, a Microsoft subsidiary

FAST is the leading global provider of best-in-class enterprise search technologies for the most demanding applications. FAST's flexible and scalable enterprise search platform (FAST ESP), empowers people and businesses, allowing them to explore and assimilate vast amounts of data regardless of format. By creating unique user experiences and changing the way people interact with information, FAST technologies can uncover new revenue streams, improve business decisions, and increase productivity.

Microsoft Search Technology Center, Europe (London, Paris, Munich)

The Microsoft Search Technology Center (STC), with its three centers of excellence in Paris, London, and Munich, will improve the European consumer search experience by delivering the best search results, simplifying key search tasks, and innovating in the business model.

Microsoft Technology Centers

Microsoft Technology Centers (MTCs) are facilities where Microsoft developers work side by side with customers, software architects, and developers to find solutions to technology challenges rapidly. The MTCs provide resources such as hardware, software, and services to MTC customers, creating an environment for collaborative development and technical support. In Europe, MTCs currently operate in Paris, France; Munich, Germany; Reading, United Kingdom; and Vedbaek/Copenhagen, Denmark.

Microsoft Local Language Program

At Microsoft, we believe that people and their communities are more likely to benefit from technology when it is available in their native language. We are committed to supporting our software in many languages so that the identity of communities can continue to thrive. In addition to the 36 international languages supported in desktop software offerings, Microsoft is encouraging growth of local IT economies and providing software in 61 languages through the Local Language Program.

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Microsoft BizSpark for Entrepreneurs 

Microsoft BizSpark is a global program designed to help accelerate the success of entrepreneurs and early stage start-ups, launched in November 2008. As part of BizSpark, Microsoft provides startups with a three-year Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Premium subscription. MSDN makes design and development tools available to help build, test, and maintain an application on Microsoft platforms.

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Microsoft Imagine Cup for Students 

The Imagine Cup gives high school and college students from around the world a chance to innovate and create. Imagine Cup contestants have the opportunity to give their ideas exposure, gain practical experience, and stretch the limits of their imagination by creating solutions that have real-world applications.

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