The interplay between research and industry: HCI and grounded innovation

Successful industry-orientated research is a matter of balancing many different stakeholders with different and sometimes conflicting goals. While a company's objective is to produce products that can be sold to customers, the researcher's main goal is to produce and document new knowledge. It may be natural to assume that new knowledge can contribute directly to innovative products, but experience shows us that this is in fact rarely the case – innovation is a much more complex pursuit than simply turning knowledge into products. In the case of HCI research, it is not enough to create a great interface; there is a large number of other factors that contribute to success, such as finding the right cost, defining compelling use cases, determining market position and so on. While some of these may fall outside the definition of academic research, it certainly does not hurt to have an awareness of them, and even a basic understanding of the path to successful innovation can help with making research results more relevant in the larger picture.