Smart service systems provide some great opportunities for B2B startups over the next decade – much as e-commerce websites were hot in the 1990’s….
Here are the URLs that elaborate, for startup businesses to supply cognitive assistants to other businesses (B2B):
https://service-science.info/archives/3721
https://service-science.info/archives/3603
Here is a short paragraph version describing some of IBM’s efforts:
IBM has been developing cognitive assistants for occupations such as oncologist, biochemical engineer, and even to chefs at Bon Apetit magazine experimental kitchens. IBM makes access to IBM Cloud Bluemix and Watson Cognitive Services on Bluemix available at no charge to faculty and students around the world for education and research purposes to explore the development of cognitive assistant for all occupations. IBM provides a limited number of competitively awarded faculty awards for aligned grant proposals, as well as a limited number of internship and PhD Fellowships to highly qualified doctoral students working in this area of developing cognitive assistants for all occupations. Businesses are customers for cognitive assistants for all occupations to boost the creativity and productivity of their workers, increasing revenue and profit per employee measures. This creates enormous opportunities for startups interested in creating B2B offerings – since there are nearly 1000 occupations described in O*NET online, with many sub-tasks, and multiple language opportunities, each an opportunity for cognitive systems B2B offerings from startups across all industry sectors. Government are funding the development of cognitive assistants in key areas to both boost GDP of regions, as well as to improve social service offerings to the most disadvantaged and socially or economically challenged members of their societies. IBM Global Entrepreneur Program and Smart Camp programs have been established to encourage IBM-aligned startups in the B2B space.
It would be great if other investors could match $ for $ on each industry invested dollar to hire and train doctoral students in this important area for the future of business and society. The startup potential to deliver 1000 occupations (times) 10 main sub-tasks (times) 200 major languages globally (US firms selling globally or to language subpopulations in the US businesses) = 2 million possible B2B startups! There has got to be a “gusher” somewhere in those 2 million possibilities.
The locations are marked where it is possible for “startups to drill for oil” and the entrepreneurial research faculty and students can even get no-cost access to the “rigging to drill experimental education and research wells” – as well as a limited number of faculty awards, internships, and PhD Fellowships. Anything other investors (government, foundation, angels, VCs, etc.) can do to accelerate this and amplify the investment could have a huge impact on startups that boost worker productivity and creativity on a new Moore’s law for occupations improvement. This is what Doug Engelbart helped envision with augmentation theory – see slide #2 in this deck.
Also, cognitive assistants (AKA intelligent personal assistants) are of interest to a growing number of companies – each month a new company is added to the list here in the first paragraph of this article in Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_personal_assistant
If you want to help the next generation of entrepreneurial researchers/T-shaped professionals, then this is a territory full of B2B startup “gushers” just waiting to be drilled!!!