The idea management software and services firm Wazoku today announced a new funding round of €1.4 million, led by Calculus Capital and supported by other shareholders and members of the Wazoku management team. Also, Wazoku is continuing its expansion with the acquisition of US open innovation firm InnoCentive‘s assets. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed yet.
The idea behind this acquisition is to create the world’s most comprehensive and powerful innovation platform and community. Following a partnership earlier in 2020, it quickly became clear that the combination of platform and network had great value to innovation-focused businesses. Wazoku was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in London.
Simon Hill, the Wazoku CEO commented: “Adding such a remarkable and proven external crowd to our existing platform means that no other organisation in the world has our reach and experience when it comes to open innovation, crowdsourcing and idea management. This is a significant step for Wazoku – further funding and a strategic acquisition mean we are better positioned than ever and have a strong and established US presence. Workplaces are becoming inherently open and collaborative and we can offer the tools, services and collective expertise to help global businesses of all sizes solve problems and create opportunities.”
InnoCentive has grown a global network of almost 500,000 expert problem “solvers” comprising CEOs, PhD students, engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, retired technologists and business leaders. This combined brainpower has helped address thousands of the world’s most complex innovation and bid data challenges, for organisations such as AstraZeneca, NASA and Enel. According to InnoCentive they have a 75% success rate in solving such challenges.
Wazoku now probably provides the world’s biggest innovation community and broadest innovation offering. It allows the crowdsourcing of solutions to any pressing business challenge, all supported by the features and functionality already found in the Wazoku platform, Idea Spotlight.
Wazoku’s latest investment round brings the total amount raised to €8.21 million and recognises the increasing demand for innovation in business. Covid-19 saw both an increase in business and a change in the way in which organisations were using Wazoku, with the quarter during lockdown (April-Jun 2020) Wazoku’s best ever from a new business perspective and overall platform activity level.
via https://www.AiUpNow.com/ by contact@bcurdy.com, Khareem Sudlow
