Wazoku CEO says most innovation mistakes happen in the first 10 minutes

Simon Hill’s new book, Mapping Value, argues that organisations often lock into the wrong problem before the real work begins, wasting time and money on solutions aimed at the wrong target. The book draws on Wazoku data and case studies to show why the broadest search for answers often wins.

Why it matters: - Simon Hill’s central claim is that innovation teams can spend heavily and still miss the real opportunity if they frame the wrong question at the start. - The book argues that this early mistake can quietly shape budgets, hiring and project direction for years. - Hill says the biggest payoff comes from widening the search for solutions beyond the field that first defines the problem.

What happened: - Wazoku CEO and author Simon Hill released Mapping Value, a new book on how organisations can improve innovation outcomes. - The book says the most expensive innovation mistake is often a confident answer to the wrong question, usually made in the first ten minutes of a meeting. - Hill says around 70% of winning solutions in Wazoku’s data come from outside the field that owns the problem. - Mapping Value is available now in print and eBook via the book’s site. An audiobook will follow.

The details: - The book draws on more than two decades of data from Wazoku’s open innovation marketplace Innocentive and a global community of more than 1 million problem-solvers across 195 countries. - Hill’s five-step method is to reframe and bound the real need, find where solutions could come from, map the landscape, measure where value lives, and commit. - Hill says organisations often narrow a problem through the language of whoever named it, then lock into a single direction without recognising that a choice was made. - The book argues that a process can look successful even when it is aimed at the wrong target, because the better answer was never considered. - Case studies in the book include NASA’s forecasting of dangerous solar particle storms, solved by a retired radio-frequency engineer using physics from another field. - Another example describes a Canadian gold miner that published confidential geological data online and found outsiders identified roughly half of what became a multi-billion-dollar seam of ore. - A third example says video game players cracked the structure of an HIV-related protein in three weeks after scientists had worked on it for 15 years. - Hill says organisations often screen out distant or unusual ideas first, even though those ideas can hold the most value. - Hill previewed the book’s ideas in a TEDx talk, “Genius Doesn’t Scale,” at TEDx Innovation Drive in Fairfield, Connecticut. - Hill says Wazoku data show challenges reaching solvers in only a handful of countries fail about two-thirds of the time. - Hill says no challenge that reached 40 or more countries has failed in 25 years. - The book follows Hill’s 2025 title Expected Value: The System to Align Innovation, Strategy, and Value Creation, for which he was named Author of the Year at the Thinkers360 2026 Annual Awards. - Hill is the founder and CEO of Wazoku, which says it helps organisations activate human intelligence to solve complex challenges and create measurable value.

Between the lines: - Hill’s argument is less about creativity than access: better outcomes may depend on reaching more varied solvers, not just more senior experts. - The data points in the book support a broader message that innovation failure can come from process design, not just weak ideas. - The framing suggests many teams may mistake internal consensus for problem clarity.

What's next: - Wazoku is positioning Mapping Value as a practical guide for leaders looking to widen their innovation funnel before committing resources. - Hill plans the book to sit alongside his earlier work as a system for aligning innovation decisions with measurable value. - An audiobook version is due later.