We’re now nearly seven weeks into the Watson Build challenge for Business Partners, and at every stop in our travels the response has been amazing. We had a tremendous turnout for the recent workshops held across the United States and Europe, and this week we are in Japan experiencing the same strong interest. Next week we’ll be moving on to Asia Pacific and Latin America, so I just wanted to pause here to say thanks to all the Business Partners who have reached out to me over the last few weeks to describe their experiences—and even share some sneak-peeks of their ideas.

One Business Partner told me: “We were so energized by what we heard at the workshop, we went back to the office to brainstorm on solution ideas, and are now currently working on three very exciting proposals to include in the Watson Build challenge.”

I have received so many inspiring notes like this lately, and they have only served to further fuel our focus on helping you all succeed in the Watson Build challenge. To that end, we have leveraged our experience from the Beacon Awards to create sample business plans for your reference in the planning stage. Let me emphasize that this is just a sample for your reference. It is in no way meant to be the only way to approach the plan, but more to give you a point of reference on how to address the types of information the judges will be looking for in the Watson Build entries.

This first medium-large solution business plan sample represents a solution leveraging four Watson APIs to deliver a robust enterprise call-center solution. You should expect to invest about 20 hours to get to this level of detail. I believe you will find this sample helpful in spurring ideas, as well as further clarifying what the template guidance intended. Soon, we will be posting a small solution business plan for your reference as well, so stay tuned!

If you haven’t joined the Watson Build challenge yet, you should spend some time investigating how it can help you leverage Watson to deliver new capabilities to your clients to enhance their competitive position.