Last week on the special episode of Jeopardy, we witnessed a transformational milestone in the history of computing. Facing off against super champions (and humans) Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter was an LCD panel in the center podium nicknamed Watson. Behind Watson was four years of work by IBM scientists resulting in a 2,800 core, 15 terabyte memory supercomputer designed to compete in a field we’ve believed is something only humans can do: natural language processing. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI-M7O_bRNg As the contest began, the machine was holding its own. Then the brilliance of its algorithms added up into dollars, and at a pivotal moment – shall we say perhaps a little bit of machine luck – Watson picked the Double Jeopardy question. The final question on 19th century novelists sealed the deal. Classy Ken Jennings said later “we saw something new here.” Show host Alex Trebeck rightly pondered “where do we go from here?” Is this a big deal? Is it really a contest that a machine the size of ten refrigerators is competing against a 3-lb. human brain? How is this better than Google returning 3.6 million results back in 0.14 seconds? To understand, realize the fundamental difference about this challenge: Watson was not returning …Read More
Sales and Marketing Alignment: Would you put your livelihood in the other guy’s hands?
In a recent issue of BtoB magazine, sales and marketing alignment was the subject of a special report. As I read the articles, I observed some broad themes: Marketing manages the call center Inside sales is nurturing leads longer Technology gains a more prominent role All of these ideas were solid, and they have a track record in many organizations. These well-recognized trends shared by industry leaders were very illuminating. We might think there’s progress, at last. Maybe it’s just me, but I felt the “let’s bring this together and make it work dammit” sentiment I was picking up was missing something completely. Whenever I try to solve problems, my instinct is to search for a similar situation at another place, explore how it was solved, and capture any lessons learned. There are not many problems that nature and human history haven’t already encountered. My approach is not perfect, but often it breaks the thinking rut I’d be in. As a private pilot, one such place I go searching is aviation. I thought of the relationship between the Air Force and the Army. They each do different things and have a parallel life for the most part, but in modern day warfare …Read More