Innovation scale-up Wazoku has announced a new partnership with world-renowned innovation consultant Stephen Shapiro, bringing his consultancy services to existing Wazoku clients and new prospects.
Stephen Shapiro works with enterprises such as Marriott, P&G, 3M and Microsoft to redefine innovation. Using his Invisible Solutions® approach, he helps create a culture of innovation where everyone identifies, reframes, and solves their most important problems.
In addition to using his consultancy expertise to help clients innovate and solve challenges, Wazoku also plans to incorporate Shapiro’s methodology into its own training programmes. Simon Hill, CEO, Wazoku believes that the partnership is a proposition with limitless potential to drive innovation in enterprises:
“Stephen is perhaps the world’s foremost innovation expert, so to add his experience, drive and expertise to our platform and services is a coup for Wazoku and its clients. The problems and challenges facing organisations now require a big solution, and the need for innovation at scale has never been greater. Stephen’s consultancy and guidance can play a major role in this and are already being used by some of our clients.”
Stephen Shapiro built and led Accenture’s 20,000-person process and innovation practice and is now a speaker, author and innovation consultant. His innovation programmes help businesses increase performance using his unique 25 Lenses approach.
His lenses allows organisations to reframe any problem in multiple ways and gain different perspectives, asking better questions to find better solutions. It is a methodology that will be incorporated in Wazoku’s proprietary Challenge Driven Innovation® framework, which drives innovation outcomes with a proven ROI via the opening up of unlimited capacity for innovation in clients.
“I’ve worked with InnoCentive for years and have always been a fan of its external crowdsourcing approach to innovation,” said Stephen Shapiro. “When Wazoku acquired InnoCentive, I knew this was going to be a rebirth for the world of crowdsourcing. By blending the two organisations, and creating Wazoku’s Enterprise Innovation Platform, it now offers the best internal and external crowdsourcing platform that can tackle today’s complex challenges.”
Wazoku’s integrated Enterprise Innovation Platform includes Idea Management Software, an Open Innovation Marketplace and Innovation Consulting to provide 360-degree innovation at scale and all the tools an enterprise needs to power innovation.
“Innovation is not only scalable and sustainable, it is also necessary. But to work effectively, it needs to be brought down to everyone in the organisation,” continued Stephen Shapiro. “This requires the right processes, tools, structures and measures. Innovation is not a department; it needs to be a cultural norm. Platforms such as Wazoku have democratized innovation and pairing my Invisible Solutions® approach for reframing problems with Wazoku’s Challenge-Driven Innovation® philosophy and crowd, there is a winning combination.”
