I think it was fantastic, modern NLP could do much more (if put together with the cleverness of the Watson pipeline) and it's a pot of gold if IBM ever stop trying to apply it in healthcare and apply their brains to how it could work in customer service (for example).
Note : I am aware that there are "Watson" products that claim to be this - but they aren't because they are MBA's ideas of what the best route to selling crap to the unwary. If IBM had appointed someone with a clue and given them 10x the R&D budget for the gameshow to deliver a decent product I reckon they'd have got (at least) 100x. But... oh no.. promise 30x for 1x and get f-all.x^2
Cliches aside, I think you are right about the poor decisionmaking: IBM decided to chase the biggest, most bureaucratic market, healthcare, rather than pick a market that would actually be somewhat receptive to black-box services.
Note : I am aware that there are "Watson" products that claim to be this - but they aren't because they are MBA's ideas of what the best route to selling crap to the unwary. If IBM had appointed someone with a clue and given them 10x the R&D budget for the gameshow to deliver a decent product I reckon they'd have got (at least) 100x. But... oh no.. promise 30x for 1x and get f-all.x^2
It's an epic fail