Cognitive Technologies: The real opportunities for business

A product of the field of research known as artificial intelligence, cognitive tech­nologies have been evolving over decades. Businesses are taking a new look at them because some have improved dramatically in recent years, with impressive gains in computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, and robotics, among other areas.

How are cognitive technologies being used in organizations today? To answer this question we reviewed over 100 examples of organizations that have re­cently implemented or piloted an application of cognitive technologies. These ex­amples spanned 17 industry sectors, including aerospace and defense, agriculture, automotive, banking, consumer products, health care, life sciences, media and en­tertainment, oil and gas, power and utilities, the public sector, real estate, retail, technology, and travel, hospitality, and leisure.

We found that applications of cognitive technologies fall into three main cat­egories: product, process, or insight. Product applications embed the technology in a product or service to provide end-customer benefits. Process applications embed the technology in an organization’s workflow to automate or improve operations. And insight applications use cognitive technologies—specifically advanced ana­lytical capabilities such as machine learning—to uncover insights that can inform operational and strategic decisions across an organization.