Inside H-P's Idea Incubator

Like a baseball scout hunting for a hot prospect, Hewlett-Packard's(HPQ Quote) Phil McKinney has racked up frequent-flier miles and turned over every corner of his home turf.

The object of his quest: the next breakthrough concept with the potential to set H-P's laptop and desktop PCs apart from the pack.

"Those ideas come from everybody. I've gotten them from kitchen workers in the H-P cafeteria," says McKinney, recounting a suggestion for a new type of computer keyboard he picked up while grabbing lunch at the company's Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters.

McKinney will evaluate several hundred new ideas in the course of a year, ranging from computer displays to packaging for computers. Only a handful will get the green light from H-P's innovation program office, the group headed by McKinney, which celebrates its one-year anniversary this month. ...