I sat down with founder Dr. Jay Budzik and CEO Al Wasserberger of Intellext late last week. They vividly explained how Watson helps people change their search experience from active to passive. They are finding new users, early adopters in information technology, bloggers and journalists. If you are looking for Shakira tickets at the United Center, looking at a web page and find Linkedin or Myspace contacts – it can help you. Watson brings traffic to content publishers. The search box, Google, Yahoo!, Technorati currently become the arbiter to when you see it instead of information as you need it. Intellext recently won a US Department of Homeland Security development grant. Dr. Jay’s sets the future context for Watson.
When listening, the first voice after mine is Dr. Jay’s then Al Wasserberger answers the second question…special thanks to Leigh Winter for her time in first explaining Watson to me a few months ago and then arranging this interview. I’ve really enjoyed deepening the relationship with Intellext’s people as they are both brillant about technology and yet business focused – a rare combination. Watson’s value proposition is complex until you reach a certain inflection point then it becomes amazingly simple – finding ways to reduce that cycle time is the secret key and my mind has been buzzing since my visit with ideas!
Prediction: While there are significant and interesting challenges to overcome in education, marketing, change management of the entire Internet and distribution, the core value proposition is sound and the vision is quite clear. While this has quietly lurked out there so far, I truly believe it has the power to be extremely disruptive if consumers can be educated on the convenience of passivity and change their behavior.
UPDATE: August, 2007 – Due to the rebranding of Intellext to Media River, this podcast has been removed. I however would be happy to share it with anyone who contacts me in Chicago to ask for it explaining why it’s relevant to them at this time.
Extremely interesting, I didn’t know about them.
This sounds great! As a CEO and group executive tasked with developing new business models, I do a great deal of writing and research. If this lives up to its promise it’ll be an enormous help.
I’ve downloaded the software and will be running it over the next few weeks to see how it does.