Diageo

The background: the power of sharing

Three key challenges

• Staying ahead of the competition in a fast-moving industry
• Tapping into the potential of employee ideas
• Engaging employees in a formal innovation programme

Diageo was looking for a tool to support its innovation team in generating and managing new ideas for drinks brands. The aim was to provide an idea generation platform and, at the same time, introduce a collaborative way for the team to develop those ideas. They also hoped that a tool that allowed all users to view everybody else’s ideas would inspire and spark further ones. The system needed to manage a large volume of ideas and prioritise the best as well.

The solution: a highly collaborative tool for innovation

With all this in mind, Diageo selected the Wazoku idea management platform to run an ideas challenge with their innovation team. The team were encouraged to submit any ideas they thought could provide an opportunity for Diageo — they didn’t have to be fully formed, just a seed of an idea that could be developed.

The Wazoku platform was then used as a place for the team to generate, capture and evaluate all ideas. They were encouraged to vote, comment and interact with the ones they liked and to help develop less formed ones. Ideas were brought to life with images and video using the built-in media tool. The algorithms in the tool meant that the most popular ideas rose to the top and helped managers prioritise which ones to develop further.

Three key benefits of using the Wazoku platform

• Supports structured, scalable and repeatable innovation programme
• Tool is easy to use
• Automatically ranks employee ideas for easy review and implementation

Outcomes

Over 60 team members were invited to join the Wazoku platform and contribute. The collected ideas were filtered and those with potential were selected for development and implementation. The Wazoku platform made the idea generation and development process efficient and effective — and highly collaborative. The tool also allowed for reward and recognition of those who submitted ideas that were taken forward for development — therefore also bringing in a healthy dose of competition!