Our vision is to be a world-leading, thriving, hub of innovation, anchored in Wellington, where leaders and change-makers learn how to solve problems and make bold ideas take flight.
Message from Catherine Jones, Creative HQ CEO and Lance Walker, Chair of the Board
Some highlights in numbers
We've got a new look
We're growing up, in fact, we're almost 20!
A lot has happened since our inception in 2003 and we were ready for a little refresher.
In May 2022, we launched our fresh new look for the Creative HQ brand. We merged four brands into one, including our well known Lightning Lab and Future Skills, under the refreshed brand as we all work towards the same mission; to make the Wellington region wildly famous for innovation.
We’re putting innovation in your pocket.
There’s a new podcast in town. Season 1 of Creative Couch brings you insightful and inspiring conversations with thought leaders, world-class entrepreneurs who have accomplished amazing things and of course some of our outstanding Creative HQ team who are experts in many disciplines.
We helped bold ideas take flight
Startups remain at the heart of everything we do. We’re fuelled by the passion and drive of the founders we help.
This year we’ve refined the services we offer and doubled down on the support we give to founders around Wellington and Aotearoa. We’ve run two Climate Response Accelerators, trialled a new Incubator format for a hybrid world and launched drop-in-sessions with advice and guidance for founders.
Climate Response Accelerator 2021 and 2022: ideas for a better world.
We set out to support and accelerate some of the ideas that can really create a positive impact in our world. In the past financial year, we’ve run two Climate Response Accelerators with 18 startups across the programmes, focusing on a range of important issues: from car sharing to reducing food waste, to commercialising aluminium-ion batteries.
The Incubator: supporting founders to raise their first round of investment.
This year we changed up our Incubator format. We’ve switched to an online programme, which allowed us to open up the application process to founders around the whole of Aotearoa New Zealand. Why? With COVID closing borders and putting a halt to the plans of many, we wanted to continue supporting founders at a time when they needed our support the most to grow and get investment ready.
For the 21–22 intake, we successfully supported 16 founders to grow and get ready to raise their first investment. Startups ranged from online food rescue services (Wonky Box) to an app that takes the stress out of flat hunting (Flatties).
Founder events: keeping the ecosystem connected.
We stand for being connected. To people, to our kaupapa and to keeping the ecosystem at our heart. People are at the core of everything we do, which is why we take every opportunity to bring the community together through networking opportunities and talks.
This year we introduced our Founders' Happy Hour and Founders' Breakfast to strengthen the ecosystem and provide more opportunities for our founders to meet like-minded people.
We shared the art of innovation
Innovation is for everyone. Whether you want to start your own business, change the way you work or the way you lead your team, Creative HQ helps you make that a reality.
In the past year, we scaled our new School of Innovation offering – with more workshops and organisational training programmes available in Aotearoa New Zealand and worldwide.
Learning to solve complex challenges with the T7 Masterclass in Innovation.
The Plunket team enrolled in our T7 Masterclass to upskill in the basics of innovation delivery, while solving a challenging problem.
Through this four months hands-on and immersive learning experience, the Plunket team worked on answering one big question: how can they become less reliant on government funding?
Building internal capability to improve Philippines' Ease of Doing Business.
We worked closely with the Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) to provide innovation training for key ARTA staff members through the T7 Masterclass in Innovation.
The ultimate goal? To build internal capability and allow ARTA to improve the Philippines' Ease of Doing business ranking.
Rethinking Education New Zealand Manapou ki te Ao's application process for the ENZ Product Innovation Fund.
Education New Zealand Manapou ki te Ao approached us to help them develop an open-to-all process that would enable a broad variety of education providers to apply for the fund. This is how we supported them.
Training the changemakers of the future.
We are reimagining how we build innovation mindsets and skillsets in Gen Z New Zealanders. We want to help rethink how business can be done in the near and far future, and help tackle the skill shortage in Wellington and Aotearoa.
Building on our experience running acceleration programmes for youth (remember Venture Up?) this year we’ve launched the Young Founders Incubator and the Wellington Innovation Hack, with a with a focus on connecting organisations with the talent they need.
We used innovation to create positive impact
This year we kept using innovation for social good, helping government agencies create a positive impact for their citizens. We helped eight government agencies accelerate impactful projects through our annual GovTech Accelerator Programme. And we continued to foster cross-government collaboration by bringing public sector representatives together at our annual GovTech Demo Day at the Beehive, as well as through our executive breakfast and Government Innovation Exchange.
Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira is the mandated iwi authority for Ngāti Toa Rangatira, one of the mana whenua iwi in this rohe. Over the last year Creative HQ has had the enormous privilege of working with the Rūnanga on a number of projects. These included:
- Two pilot programmes, Pakihi 1 and Pakihi 2: to explore whether we could support young people within the Rūnanga to develop their entrepreneurial skills.
- The Ngāti Toa / Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira Certificate of Applied Innovation: The Education and Employment Services team participated in the week long Certificate of Applied Innovation. The bespoke delivery enabled the team to work through a problem unique to their context and true to their kaupapa.
- The Ngāti Toa Transformational Housing workshop: This was co-designed and co-facilitated by two members of the Rūnanga, as part of extending their immersive learning based on real world projects.
Creative HQ would like to thank Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira and Rūnanga Chief Executive Helmut Modlik for supporting us in our mahi this year. This has been particularly visible by giving our keynote speeches at both our GovTech Accelerator breakfast and the Government Innovation Exchange, and in providing a kaimahi secondee to us, who worked in a pivotal role on our Climate Response Accelerator.
Rethinking the customer experience for the R&D Tax Incentive Scheme.
We worked with Callaghan Innovation to reimagine, re-design, and test a new customer experience for the R&D Tax Incentive Scheme (RDTI). The goal was to ultimately make the scheme easier for customers and advisors to understand and engage with the RDTI in order to support more New Zealand businesses with their R&D.
Rallying the community together to co-design a community-led response to climate change.
In June 2019, Hutt City Council declared a climate emergency. We were engaged to facilitate the co-design of a plan to reach the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. This brought to the creation of Te Ara Whakamua o Te Awa Kairangi ki Tai – Climate Action Pathway.
Helping government agencies de-risk innovation, while accelerating impactful projects.
In 2021, eight projects went through our annual flagship programme, the GovTech Accelerator. Projects were varied and touched on issues like; easy access to social services, to enable the whole whānau to flourish (Manaaki Tairāwhiti), improving NZ’s response to emergencies and crises (Resilience Aotearoa) and reimagining conservation education.
Bringing the public sector together to promote government collaboration.
Greater collaboration results in more successful public sector innovation outcomes. The Government Innovation Exchange was designed to create more opportunities for like-minded public sector innovators across Wellington’s ecosystem to collaborate.
Measuring innovation in government, to drive progress.
Senior leaders in the NZ public sector don't currently have a good way to measure innovation. We set out on a mission to change that by developing the Innovation Barometer.
Financial Reports will be provided once our annual audit is complete.