During the Q&A session at the HP Labs event, both HP's CTO Shane Robison and Lab director Prith Banerjee shed a bit more light on the latest change.

First, HP Labs will be more keen than before to "kill" unsuccessful projects and reallocate researchers to new ones, through a review board including scientists and business execs. The new HP Labs also encourage its researchers to be more open on their discoveries and to publish in scientific journals.

Robison also reaffirmed HP's willingness to license technologies for non-competitive applications, like HP's inkjet technology that is now used in the medical field for a drug dispersion system.

"If we have a great technology and we're using it to the full extent in our business and it's useful somewhere else there's no reason that we should keep it for ourselves", Robison said.

And Banerjee to add:

"It's not about being secret. We really want to open it up because, especially in the world of IT, I think it's who comes up with a product faster to market who wins, not owns the IP".