Microsoft Research has talked up the way that its research arm is sharing information with the educational community at a company event at its Silicon Valley campus.

Working with universities is vital, argued Roy Levin, director of Microsoft Research in Silicon Valley, because academia is driving innovation.

Microsoft researchers also depend on review by their peers in universities for quality control.

"Microsoft depends on innovative technology," said Levin. "If we don't advance the state of the art, we are not advancing innovation."

"To get peer review, we need to operate as universities do. Then we have the validation that our work is at the forefront of the field and advancing the state of the art."

George Johnson, associate dean in charge of special programmes at the engineering department for the University of California Berkeley, said that Microsoft Research is typifying the approach of "first the science, then the company".

Commercial research organisations are increasingly pulling their research in house to prevent having to share the results with competitors, or to focus more on product research.

Microsoft Research was founded in 1991 and focuses on long-term research, looking 10 to 15 years into the future.

The group employs 700 people in its labs in Seattle and has satellite locations in Beijing, Bangalore, Cambridge and Silicon Valley.