NEC's 'Big Brother' Lab

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Walls Are Watching

Walking into the C&C lab can feel like entering a bugged room. More than 100 sensors along the ceiling communicate with radio frequency identification chips in researchers' ID badges, relaying to the lab's servers where everyone is. Those computers also receive data from 30 high-powered microphones and two dozen cameras, which capture researchers as they move around the room, write on whiteboards, and run through presentations.

All the action plays out on a bank of screens at the back of the room, and nothing escapes their notice. As a researcher enters a camera's sights, he shows up on one of four live video feeds and as a green line on a two-dimensional map of the room. If he takes a book off a shelf or makes a phone call, the servers pick up his virtual fingerprints. "We'll keep about 10GB of compressed video, audio, and other data per day," says Kazuo Kunieda, a senior researcher and manager at the lab. Only senior lab officials will have access to the secure files, adds Kunieda.

That's enough assurance for Sebastien Cevey, a 23-year-old Swiss graduate student from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Cevey says he doesn't equate what the company is doing to spying. "I will ultimately have the last word on whether the data is used or not," he says.

To encourage collaboration and interdisciplinary projects, the lab has laptops on tables and near couches, and no cubicles so researchers are free to work anywhere. The main room's only partitions are functional: Sliding whiteboards hide bookshelves filled with reference materials, and glass walls allow anyone to peer into conference rooms at the back of the room.

Industry Skepticism

In the hallway, video panels on the walls act as two-way communication devices (and evoke the two-way telescreens of George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984), recording and playing video clips on command, and a separate screen acts as a video link to labs in other parts of the world. In another room, there's a proprietary mapping system that helps researchers with their search for scientific papers and potential collaborators by creating a diagram of authors' names with lines connecting those who have worked together.

It's an impressive showcase of technology but some observers are skeptical about the payback. With its expertise in networking equipment, NEC researchers might be better off tackling concrete problems, such as finding a single elegant solution for the confusing mess of phone, cable, and Internet services, says Jeneanne Rae, co-founder and president of Alexandria (Va.)-based research and consulting firm Peer Insight. "I'm all for creativity…but if there is no focus, this will soon be a waste of time and money," Rae adds.

And to reap the benefits of an open innovation system, NEC would have to be as aggressive as Cisco (CSCO), IBM (IBM), and others have been at creating an ecosystem of partnerships, something many Japanese companies haven't often shown a willingness to do. As for how NEC's surveillance of researchers would sit with Silicon Valley's techies? San Jose State's West says, "It would be a real hard sell in the Valley."

Hall is BusinessWeek's technology correspondent in Tokyo
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