{"id":7182,"date":"2026-01-14T10:38:46","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T10:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urudata.com\/?p=7182"},"modified":"2026-01-14T19:25:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T19:25:49","slug":"fin-de-ano-epoca-de-balances-linda-excusa-para-mirar-a-urudata-id-enperspectiva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urudata.com\/en\/fin-de-ano-epoca-de-balances-linda-excusa-para-mirar-a-urudata-id-enperspectiva\/","title":{"rendered":"Urudata R&D in Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

We started Urudata R&D in April 2024 with a simple idea: to do Applied Research and,\nthrough it, generate new business lines for the organization. 

But what is Applied Research? Or at least, how do we conceive it at Urudata? 

Fail fast, fail often, and create a significant impact with just a few successes. 

If we don\u2019t fail often, we\u2019re not doing research; we\u2019re just applying the state of the art in\ntechnology, which is very valuable, but not for our team. 

The fear of failure is the executioner of innovation in our organizations. 

Let me tell you how the idea of Applied Research formed in my mind over the years. I\nthink it\u2019s the best way to convey what we\u2019re trying to do at Urudata. 

The first time I became familiar with the concept of the \u2018gap\u2019 between Basic Research\nand Product Research was during Ray Ozzie\u2019s arrival at Microsoft and his idea of\ncreating the \u2018Microsoft Labs\u2019.
These connected basic research (developed by Microsoft Research on fundamental\ntopics with timelines of 10 or more years to achieve results) with Product Research\ncarried out by the product teams in Redmond (where the company\u2019s major investment\nwas, with timelines of no more than 3 years and generally a horizon of a year and a\nhalf).

Although we can link Ray Ozzie\u2019s \u2018Red Dog\u2019 and the Platform as a Service initiative\n(which became Microsoft Azure) as his legacy, in reality, we can say that the labs failed\nspectacularly and could not break the barriers between Basic Research and Product\nResearch (only an insider like Satya Nadella, almost a decade later, managed to align\nthe organization with a clear vision and without hesitation to remove two or three\nmisaligned executives in a single morning). 

When Microsoft Labs were created, I tried to move to that organization, and after some\nvisits arranged by my manager (Eduardo Mangarelli) to talk face-to-face with team\nmembers and learn what they were doing, I clearly saw they were disconnected from\nreality, and I didn\u2019t even try to apply to Microsoft Research or Microsoft Labs. 

My first opportunity to learn deeply about the topic and apply it came with the opening of\nTelef\u00f3nica R&D and CORFO\u2019s international center of excellence in IoT and data science\nin Chile, which was very focused on \u2018Product Research\u2019; and although it was a 4-year\nproject, it was unbalanced toward product and with little room for Applied Research.

So, to solve this problem, together with Loreto Bravo and Universidad del Desarrollo,\nwe created the Data Science Institute, dedicated to working on Applied Research,\nsolving real problems based on the data we had at Telef\u00f3nica R&D, resulting from the\nvast number of sensors deployed in IoT experiments in Mining, Precision Agriculture,\nand Smart Cities in 8 Latin American countries, as well as cellular network telemetry in\nChile. 

That's right, when we started the discussion with Loreto, she came up with this slide:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That was exactly what I was looking for\u2014not an academic collaboration where a\nresearcher \u2018sells\u2019 you their research to apply, but rather takes one of your unsolved\nproblems with the current state of technology and evolves the technology to solve it. 
That was exactly what I was looking for\u2014not an academic collaboration where a\nresearcher \u2018sells\u2019 you their research to apply, but rather takes one of your unsolved\nproblems with the current state of technology and evolves the technology to solve it. 

The key to success? A research team focused on the problem and not on \u2018their\nresearch topic,\u2019 high-quality data available, and an engineering team with a startup\nmindset to experiment and fail fast. 
And then we arrived at Urudata R&D\u2014a young team (except for the writer),\nmultidisciplinary and ambitious to solve problems, paired with a young engineering team\nled by Ignacio Cattivelli (who brings both engineering excellence and a startup mindset),\nboth teams focused on solving real problems for our clients that require pushing the\nstate of the art in technology. These are problems where, a priori, one cannot find an\nadequate solution and wouldn\u2019t even dare to estimate a time to solve them. 

Today, we are already 16 people on the team, and we have solved several \u2018impossible\u2019\nchallenges:
In various types of fraud models.
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