
Ask HN: Other innovative companies like 3M? - vram22
What are some other innovative companies like 3M is&#x2F;was reputed to be?<p>I had read some years ago in a book about various companies (most of them were American, IIRC) that 3M was a very innovative company and kept coming out with new products. Today I was buying some 3M product online and was reminded of that book, which triggered this question. Note: the companies could be into any field, not just physical products or software.<p>Thanks to all who reply.
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smt88
I'd argue that Microsoft is like that. Their research divisions create a lot
of amazing things. They're just not very good at marketing those aspects of
their company, although friends at Microsoft say some of the internal demo
videos are breathtaking.

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georgewsinger
Out of curiosity: Besides the Hololens, what are some amazing things their
research has generated in the past 10 years?

~~~
smt88
Preventing SIDS via data analysis: [https://news.microsoft.com/features/love-
aaron-children-may-...](https://news.microsoft.com/features/love-aaron-
children-may-susceptible-sids/)

Original Microsoft Surface (tabletop computing):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxk_WywMTzc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxk_WywMTzc)

Real-time language translation on Skype:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu9kMIeS0wQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu9kMIeS0wQ)

TouchWall:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PimbkQNKzb4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PimbkQNKzb4)

F#, TypeScript, P, and possibly other programming languages

HoloDesk

Kinect

Industry-leading speech recognition:
[https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/09/13/microsoft-
resear...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2016/09/13/microsoft-researchers-
achieve-speech-recognition-milestone/)

HomeOS

There are more, but I'm too lazy to Google it. They also had a dual-screen,
folding tablet that I really wished had made it to the market, but I can't
remember the name.

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vram22
Interesting list. Coincidentally, I was checking F# out briefly just a few
days ago. Read a lot of positive things about it, including that some people
think the language is fairly well-designed. I'm not a language design expert
though, so can't comment its design. But this makes me want to try it out
properly. Thank you.

