A few days ago, Scott Sheppard wrote an interesting blog post entitled "Why does Autodesk have a Labs?". I tweeted it, as I found it did a good job of describing not only the rationale behind Autodesk Labs, but other important customer touch points such as the Beta program and Autodesk Research.
With my completionist hat on I'd probably expand the touch points to include how we connect with Major Account customers – particular via Autodesk Consulting and our Enterprise Support teams – as this is also a way that product features and defined and delivered. In fact, I'd probably go as far as including Independent Software Vendors (ISVs, or 3rd party developers) and resellers, who provide another important channel for innovation and delivering value to Autodesk product users. This especially makes sense in the context of acquisitions, but is also true in a broader sense of delivering value to customers and meeting their requirements.
But that's by the by, really: the point I wanted to highlight is the relationship Labs has with my new team – Autodesk Research – and how much of our technology ends up being made available via it. Autodesk Labs is really an important mechanism for the company (and specifically for Autodesk Research).
If you don't check it regularly, be sure to head across to Autodesk Labs. There's lots of good stuff there, and there'll be even more in the future. I strongly recommend signing up for Innovation Edge – the Autodesk Labs newsletter. Here's the latest release at the time of writing.
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