At a company brimming with smart technologists, Microsoft's (MSFT) Rick Rashid is the boss of the supersmart. When Bill Gates recruited him to launch the company's R&D lab in 1991, Rashid was a well-respected Carnegie Mellon computer science professor. Today, Microsoft's research group has grown to encompass five labs on three continents. It's still run like a computer science department, but there's one big difference: Rashid is responsible for providing Microsoft execs with the big ideas needed to exploit emerging market opportunities.
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