Microsoft Research is more important to the tech titan than ever. Crucial futuristic products like the HoloLens holographic goggles and Skype Translate came straight out of the company's science labs. But research wasn't always this central to Microsoft -- in fact, there used to be a "barrier" between the more academia-like Microsoft Research and the rest of the company, recalls Microsoft researcher emeritus and Silicon Valley icon Gordon Bell. For Microsoft Research, it was considered "not appropriate to be a part of what Microsoft was selling," Bell tells Business Insider. Bell, who helped set up Microsoft Research in the early 1990's, says that the team did great work on the very cutting edge of computer science and interaction design.