Wazoku

Wazoku provides innovation management with an unusual licensing model, charging per administrator with unlimited end users. It includes Wazoku AI as an ecosystem layer, adaptive research services, and InnoCentive, described as the world's largest open innovation ecosystem, with markets named across water, energy, defence and government.

Licensing by administrator rather than by seat is the pricing decision that shapes the programme, and it is aligned with how these actually succeed. Charging per user gives an organisation a reason to restrict who can participate, which directly limits the pool of ideas the platform exists to gather. Scaling cost with the number of people running programmes rather than contributing to them removes that conflict entirely.

InnoCentive is a materially different capability from the software. It posts a defined technical challenge to an external network of solvers and pays for a working answer, which suits a problem an organisation has failed to solve internally and would otherwise abandon.

Onboarding priced explicitly and separately is worth noting. The vendor describes services that build on the licence rather than replace work the customer should do themselves, which is a franker description than most vendors offer.