Wazoku

Wazoku is a UK-based software company headquartered in London. Established in 2011 by Simon Hill, James King, and Rosemarie Diegnan, the company provides cloud-based tools for capturing, evaluating, managing, and implementing ideas, and operates an open innovation network where organisations can engage with external experts. Wazoku works with a range of clients including government bodies, multinational corporations, and non-profit organisations.

As of 2024, the company has secured approximately £18 million in venture funding.

History

Wazoku was founded in 2011 in London by Simon Hill, who previously worked at PwC, Deloitte, and the software company Huddle, James King, and Rosemarie Diegnan. In its early years, Wazoku developed a software platform named Idea Spotlight for structured idea management in organisations.

In 2013, it received $520,000 in seed funding from Cambridge Angels and Fig. This was followed in 2014 by an additional £750,000 investment from Cambridge Angels and New Model Venture Capital.

In 2017, the company secured £2.3 million through a combination of equity and venture debt, including funding from Barclays and former investor Cambridge Angels and Fig.

In July 2020, Wazuko acquired the U.S.-based innovation platform InnoCentive. This acquisition brought with it a global network of 500,000 external contributors and expanded Wazoku’s capacity. The company raised an additional £1.25 million from the Enterprise Investment Scheme and Calculus Capital.

In 2022, Wazoku completed an £8.5 million Series B funding round led by Octopus Ventures, with continued investment from Calculus Capital. The funding was used to support product development, international operations, and the acquisition of Mindpool, a Danish company focused on collective intelligence and behavioural insights. Mindpool collects employee opinions and forecasts to generate insights and suggestions based on aggregated input to assess organisation performance and overall company health. Following the acquisition, Wazoku relaunched the dashboard under the name Mindpool SME in January 2023.

Between 2023 and 2025, Wazoku expanded its activities through additional acquisitions and partnerships. It acquired UK-based idea management platform Idea Drop in early 2023, and German R&D platform Posterlab later that year. In 2024 and 2025 Wazoku collaborated with organisations including NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator, Norwegian Offshore Wind, Roche and the Abu Dhabi Technology Innovation Institute.

In April 2025, it partnered with the National Innovation Center par Excellence (NICE) to fund innovation initiatives in China’s Yangtze River Delta.

In December 2025, Wazoku partnered with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to start open-innovation challenges, starting with solutions to detect and map underwater mines and unexploded ordnance.

Wazoku Platform

Wazoku Platform is a modular system that facilitates the capture, evaluation, and portfolio management of ideas from employees, teams, or stakeholders. It includes workflow automation, analytics and AI, and integrates with commonly used enterprise collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Google Workspace.

Wazoku Innocentive (formerly Wazoku Crowd)

In 2020, Wazoku acquired InnoCentive, an open innovation marketplace. The platform was integrated into Wazoku’s innovation management and briefly operated under the umbrella name Wazoku Crowd from August 2022 onwards.

In June 2025, Wazoku officially revived the Innocentive name for its global marketplace, officially renaming Wazoku Crowd to Innocentive. The platform connects organisations with a global network of registered problem solvers, including scientists, engineers, CEOs, startups, and business leaders.

Awards and recognition

In 2022, the company was named a Silver Stevie Award winner in the “Company of the Year – Computer Software (Medium-size)” category at the 19th Annual International Business Awards. In July, the company was named one of the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women in 2022.

In 2024, Wazoku received multiple user-based badges from the software review platform G2 within the Strategy and Innovation Roadmapping Tools, and Idea Management categories.