Everyone knows Watson, the “intelligent” computer designed by IBM to understand unstructured data, which showed off its prowess by winning Jeopardy, the famous American game show. But IBM has not yet been able to convert this critical acclaim into hard currency.

This explains why they created the Watson Group, a new division whose mission is to accelerate the development and marketing of new solutions dedicated to cognitive computing. The program includes $1 billion in investment, $100 million of which is earmarked as venture capital to support startups affiliated with the Watson Developers Cloud launched last November.

For its designers, Watson is a revolutionary platform, which ushers in a new generation of machines capable of filtering, structuring and “understanding” massive quantities of data written in human language. And according to IBM CEO Virginia Rometty, Watson “has the potential to transform industry and enterprises to new levels of knowledge for citizens and the masses.”

From this point of view, which we share, a broad range of analytical applications with a very high added value should logically ensue. We already mentioned the case of medical diagnostics with a higher accuracy rate than that of specialized practitioners, but Watson can also be used to better define customer expectations and meet them by providing the right discount or the right offering, to provide an immediate response to the numerous questions asked of public service agencies, to help travelers find their itinerary according to a multitude of criteria, etc.

Not only do these examples give meaning to the term “smart machine”, they also clear the path for a seemingly infinite sequence of smart-machine-driven disruptions, first in the corporate world, then among consumers. Gartner is spot on, listing Watson in its Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2014. The knowledgeable analysts predict that by 2017, 10% of all computers will have cognitive capabilities derived from IBM’s work. That for sure would mean progress for real!