Wazoku joins TEDxStockholm as innovation partner

Wazoku has become a one-year partner of TEDxStockholm ahead of the HUMAN AFTER ALL event on 15 November in Stockholm. The tie-up extends the company’s Swedish presence and puts its human-plus-AI innovation model in front of a local audience focused on technology, creativity and what makes us human.

Why it matters: - Wazoku’s partnership with TEDxStockholm puts its open innovation model in front of a high-profile audience in Sweden, one of Europe’s strongest innovation markets. - The event gives Wazoku a live platform to show how companies can use human intelligence and AI together to solve problems. - The partnership also reinforces Wazoku’s long-running focus on Sweden, where the company already has a team and local clients.

What happened: - Wazoku was named a partner of TEDxStockholm for an initial one-year term. - The first activation will take place at HUMAN AFTER ALL on 15 November at Nya Cirkus on Stockholm’s Djurgården island. - The event theme explores what makes people human in a world increasingly shaped by technology. - Wazoku will host an interactive challenge space at the event.

The details: - Wazoku says its Innocentive marketplace is backed by more than two decades of data and a community of over 1 million problem-solvers across 195 countries. - The company says around 70% of winning solutions come from outside the field that owns the problem. - The challenge space will invite attendees to look for hidden links between unrelated ideas. - The event’s exhibition space will be built around the five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. - Simon Hill, co-founder of Wazoku, said the strongest innovation comes from combining AI with human perspective. - Hill said AI helps frame a problem and identify the people most likely to solve it. - Hill said the reach of the solver network matters more than the seniority of the experts in the room. - Hill said Stockholm is the right place for the conversation because of the city’s innovation profile. - Wazoku previously used its data to highlight that challenges reaching only a handful of countries fail roughly two-thirds of the time. - Hill said that in 25 years, no challenge reaching 40 or more countries has failed.

Between the lines: - The partnership follows Hill’s TEDx talk in September, “Genius Doesn’t Scale,” at TEDx Innovation Drive in Fairfield, Connecticut. - That talk previewed ideas behind Hill’s new book, Mapping Value. - Wazoku’s message is that innovation outcomes depend less on internal expertise and more on access to wider external networks. - TEDxStockholm’s theme and Wazoku’s pitch are closely aligned, which makes the partnership a natural fit for both sides. - Aziza Sudirman, TEDxStockholm Licensee Holder & Board Member, said Wazoku’s global reach and Swedish focus make it an ideal partner. - Sudirman said the TEDxStockholm team is excited for the November event.

What’s next: - Wazoku will support TEDxStockholm over the next year. - The company’s first public role in the partnership will be at HUMAN AFTER ALL on 15 November. - Wazoku is likely to use the event to expand visibility in Sweden and deepen relationships across the Nordic innovation community. - The company’s broader work in Sweden includes support for Sandvik’s global Ideas Hub, which aims to gather 100,000 ideas by 2030 to support sustainability goals. - Wazoku also counts Nordic clients including Denmark’s Topsoe and Norwegian Offshore Wind.

The bottom line: - Wazoku is using TEDxStockholm to showcase a core bet: the best ideas often come from outside the room, and the broader the network, the better the odds of success.