Bet365 to explore new technologies with platform innovation hub
Stoke-on-Trent-headquartered operator to recruit externally and internally for new outward-looking department
Bet365 has launched a new Platform Innovation Hub as it looks to focus on increasing innovation and working with new technologies.
The new department will be manned with staff made up of specialists from what the firm branded a “broad technology church”, with individuals recruited both internally and externally.
The department will operate with two key objectives, the first of which is to explore new technologies to identify whether they can make a “meaningful, material and lasting” contribution to the existing bet365 platform.
Secondly, the hub will collaborate with bet365’s technology teams to establish ways in which these processes can then be integrated across the business.
“To achieve its goals, Platform Innovation will provide insight, expert guidance, tools and benchmarks. It will connect people across the organisation and, most importantly, provide a space to experiment with new technologies and approaches,” bet365 said in a statement.
The department will be headed up by bet365 veteran Alan Reed, who has served as the firm’s head of systems development since 2007.
Speaking about his new role and the wider relationship with bet365’s technology goals, Reed suggested the firm had historically taken an “internal approach” to innovation, something which would now shift with the new department.
Reed said: “The strength of our product and the creativity of the people who engineer it has ensured we’ve continued to lead the market.
“Looking forward, we want to take the next quantum leap and doing so will require looking outward and exploring the new technologies and processes that exist outside of our purview.”
Discussing bet365’s approach to recruitment for the new department, Reed continued: “We’re looking for free thinkers who excel at solving real world problems.
“People who can approach technologies like the metaverse, bitcoin and ChatGPT without bias, pull them apart, and return with ideas on how they can disrupt our business.
“In addition to our internal and external recruitment, we will run a residency programme to immerse our people in a culture of innovation and determine how it can be driven into their departments,” he concluded.