Xuedong Huang has a mantra:

Act fast, ponder less, and learn.

Those precepts are not common in research circles, where careful deliberation is generally a necessary precondition to productive work, but there’s little doubt that they have served Huang well.

He is the general manager of the Microsoft Research Incubation team, and his group recently unveiled Response Pointâ„¢, a small-business Internet-protocol phone system. Response Point, designed for ease of use and manageability, is easy to install, supports both voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) and traditional phone lines, and features a voice-activated user interface. It will go on sale later this year.

“The Response Point voice-enabled user interface,” says Rick Rashid, Microsoft Research senior vice president, “is a great example of how innovative new technology can be applied to solve everyday customer problems.”

It’s been a dizzying adventure for Huang and his team, which relied in particular on his mantra in the early days of the incubation, before his team fully shifted its focus to shipping and production. In just two years, the team has coalesced, identified an appropriate opportunity, evaluated small-business-customer needs, devised appropriate technology, and now is on the verge of having a product in the marketplace. That’s acting fast.

As for the “ponder less” part, well, that’s where the learning comes in.

“Incubation,” Huang admits, “is much harder than I thought.”

The new incubation process began in 2005. Huang had been general manager for Microsoft’s speech platform, shipping speech technology for Exchange Server, Windows®, Office, and Windows CE.

“That,” he recalls, “was a very rewarding experience.”

But after a decade of work in that space, he felt a need to do something new. He arranged for the submission of a paper for Think Week, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates’ annual retreat for solitary study. Gates was supportive of the paper’s analysis of voice-communication concepts, and that got the Microsoft Research Incubation idea rolling.

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