Earlier this week, IBM unveiled “Watson,” a computer that the company claims represents significant new progress in natural language processing, analytics and system design: http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/. Named for IBM’s founder, Watson will face the ultimate test in language processing in Febraury, when it faces off against human Jeopardy champions on the popular game show. The Watson “DeepQA” architecture is designed specifically for understanding and delivering precise answers to questions posed in natural language — a separate INFO 202 blog post in itself — but I think this initiative is interesting from an innovation perspective. IBM seems to be hyping Watson as much as it can (the upcoming Jeopardy competition has been likened to when chess champion Garry Kasparov took on a computer in 1997) as part of an effort to make Watson the most outward-facing component of its innovation operation. This is an interesting approach to the diffusion component of the innovation value chain: by publicizing Watson on Jeopardy, IBM hopes to bring attention to (and find potential customers for) its work on technology that sure, could help a computer win at Jeopardy, but could also be used to help diagnose illnesses or solve problems at customer support centers, just to name a few potential applications.
Author: Anne Wootton
I thought this NYTimes article offers a nice bookend (no pun intended) to our presentation today on the future of physical booksellers: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/29/business/29borders.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=borders&st=Search.
In our group’s recommendations, we focused primarily on Barnes & Noble because Borders has been arguably the latest to the online retail and digital distribution game. But Borders has the right idea with temporary “pop-up” stores that the company is opening just for the holidays in small urban areas across the United States. The stores, called “Borders Express,” will carry limited inventories that include bestsellers, new releases, childrens’ books and holiday-themed items. The pop-up store model is an example of the smaller, strategic retail models that some big retailers (like Best Buy) are pursuing. It might be too late for Borders to climb out from under its mountain of debt, but the pop-up store concept is a great example of how superstores in various industries can leverage physical locations — innovation in the form of a return to the physical store concept — in their fight against online retailers and big box stores. It’s worth noting that according to this article, Target is also looking to capitalize on the pop-up store as a “flexible, attention-grabbing” way to showcase its products — but I think that physical booksellers have more to leverage in the ambiance department than your average Target.