The commercials are the public-facing tip of a much larger iceburg of enterprise-scale sales and marketing. Big institutions gave Watson a shot because they cr

The commercials are the public-facing tip of a much larger iceburg of enterprise-scale sales and marketing. Big institutions gave Watson a shot because they created a machine that maximized FOMO with intriguing demos, reduced risk with the "nobody gets fired for buying IBM effect", and perhaps most importantly pitches projects that were large enough to move the needle and make the career of a high level administrator. When you realize how much positioning is required for large scale sales, you can start to understand why the same company might not have the feedback loops in place to build a product.