Each year BT invests around 2 per cent of its turnover in research and development. In 1998 BT Labs had a budget of around DM307 million (UKP680M). Asked what they do with so much money, Professor Cochrane said "We create opportunities for choice", explaining that although people who liked driving or going to record shops should be able to go on doing that, people short of time must be enabled to substitute a virtual meeting for a business trip and by music online. Cochrane said E-commerce was one of BT's most interesting research fields. He said a powerful new market was in the making, with an enormous secondary market for infrastructure and services. Cochrane predicted that the winners would be those whose intensive research allowed them to be first into the market with the appropriate technologies. In other words, research will be the basis for innovative products and services that give companies the jump they need on the rest of the market. Looking ahead, ochrane said that whereas people have so far treated computers as electronic slaves, asking them always to answer the same "what if?" questions, in future people might simply sit down at the computer and say "Find a problem and solve it".

(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 March 1999 p B35)