We’ve completed 100+ innovation projects across 13 countries.

Wellington – November 2021: Wellington is bucking the trend with women currently making up the majority of founders participating in Creative HQ’s innovation and startup programmes at Wellington’s innovation hub. Nationwide women make up 17% of business founders. Further, women-founded or…

Wellington, New Zealand — January 2026 Creative HQ has appointed six leading founders and startup operators as brand ambassadors, formalising a deeper relationship with people already closely connected to the organisation and the wider innovation ecosystem. Meet the Brand Ambassadors…

Wellington – 6 June 2024: Creative HQ’s accelerators provide our cohorts with mentors and coaches to assist them through their unique challenges across a 12-week programme. Mentors and coaches play critical roles in startup accelerator teams, but what exactly is…

Meet Wellington’s newest accounting startup: COUNT COUNT’s founders see the accounting SaaS industry as ripe for disruption – with large incumbents dominating the market, prices too high, and innovation having slowed. At the same time, accountants and bookkeepers are spending…

Who we worked with Manaaki Tairāwhiti and Ministry of SocialDevelopment What we did together GovTech Accelerator Aotearoa spends more than 50 billion dollars annually on social services that are designed to help everyone thrive. However, these services inadvertently create barriers….

Who we worked with Valenzuela City What we did together 16-week accelerator Key skills Innovation methodologies and tools, human-centred design, team collaboration and online collaboration Read more Valenzuela City, New Zealand Government Showcase Innovative Social Welfare Programme Since 2018, Creative…

A series of webinars brought to you by Creative HQ with the support of our friends over at the Institute of Directors and WellingtonNZ. Demystifying innovation Episode 1: Defining innovation What does innovation look like, feel like and sound like…

Who we worked with Kāinga Ora What we did together GovTech Accelerator Key skills Applied innovation Read more Grey’s ave The accelerator programme helped Kāinga Ora create a user-centric solution, which in turn secured investment from senior leadership. The programme…

In 2025, Fourteen trailblazing teams joined the ranks of Fintech Lab alumni like Sharesies, Hnry, Tapi, Cove Insurance, and First AML — compressing a year’s worth of progress into an intensive 3-month accelerator. Fintech startups drive job creation, build wealth and generate valuable intellectual property for…

Who we worked with Contact Energy What we did together Design sprint Key Skills Problem Discovery, Ideation, Prototyping Contact Energy is one of New Zealand’s leading energy generators and retailers, providing electricity, natural gas and LPG to about 562,000 customers…

Who we worked with Ho Chi Minh People’s Committee What we did together Built innovation capability in HCMPC staff. In April 2019, twenty delegates from the Ho Chi Minh People’s Committee (HCMPC) in Vietnam came to Creative HQ for two…

Wellington – 15 December 2021: A new study from Wellington’s innovation hub, Creative HQ, has found that an overwhelming majority (96%) of Gen Z believe that innovation should be taught in schools, with 77% of respondents viewing themselves as innovative….

Who we worked with VERI-Mi What we did together GovTech Accelerator “It’s about empowering people, with information about their rights. I’m not convinced minimum standards exist for migrant workers at the moment.” Dhilum NightingaleVERI-Mi, Founder The problem Every day, people…

Who we worked with MFAT and NZ business representatives What we did together Sprint Key Skills Problem discovery, ideation With an unprecedented series of sporting, cultural and political events happening in Japan from 2019–2025, New Zealand companies and agencies have…

Interview with Carl Vink from Whakatupu Aotearoa Foundation What we did together Whakatupu Aotearoa Foundation is a partner with us for the Climate Response Accelerator 2024 Carl Vink Chief Executive at Whakatupu Aotearoa Foundation Whakatupu Aotearoa, a strategic philanthropic foundation…

Who we worked with Ministry of Education What we did together 2-day summit Key skills Co-design Read more The Kōrero Mātauranga  The goal? To create transformational change in the education sector, Creative HQ and partner Openfield created Kōrero Mātauranga –…

Who we worked with Trade Me What we did together 12-week programme Key skills Problem discovery, ideations, prototyping Trade Me Jobs is the recruitment business unit of Trade Me, New Zealand’s largest Internet-auction website. Trade Me Jobs has approx. 50…

Wellington – 14 April 2025: Fifteen founders with bold new ideas on how to tackle the climate crisis are currently embarking on Creative HQ’s Aurora Climate Lab to supercharge their start-up journey. “Aurora Climate Lab is our fourth accelerator backing…

Who we worked with Speakers around Wellington and New Zealand What we did together 1-week festival Key skills human-centred design Read more All the latest updates on Mindset of Design website Exploring how humans can work better together. Ultimately it…

OPINION 26 August 2024 – Have you ever been freedom camping? Did you find a nice spot of grass and just pitch your tent? Have you ever done this on the lawn of Parliament? In Feb 2022, the grounds of…

Raising capital as a startup founder, especially as a female founder, can be a daunting challenge. In a recent webinar, Sarah Park and Dr Kathleen Lucere from Even Capital shared their insights on navigating the venture capital (VC) landscape. They…

The time is now OPINION 24 May 2024 – If the annual Budget is something of a state-of-the-nation moment for Aotearoa New Zealand, it is timely to present a state-of-the-industry assessment for the tech startup sector. As I stood on…

Do you remember wanting a particular toy when you were a kid? Maybe it was a Furby, or a Tamagotchi, or maybe a stick and hoop, depending on what generation you’re from. Everyone else had one and you were convinced…

It’s a match. The city’s creatives are joining forces with the tech sector to support the next generation of creators, and Creative HQ believes that with the right support, Creative Tech has the potential to become Wellington’s next goldmine. Announced…

A strong Fintech sector matters for New Zealand. Financial services shape how people save, borrow, invest, insure and run businesses. When these systems are more accessible, efficient and trustworthy, the benefits compound across the economy — from household resilience to…

Wellington – 18 November 2021: Ten startups from across the country are bringing their digital product ideas to life as they kick off the 2021 Incubator programme today at Creative HQ, Wellington’s innovation hub. This year’s Incubator cohort is loaded with…

Who we worked with Jobs for Nature What we did together GovTech Accelerator The problem Connecting with nature is essential for our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. It allows us to establish social connections, develop a profound sense of responsibility…

Wellington – 23 March 2022 Carbon capture technology, AI recycling and ‘Xero for climate change‘ are just a few of the ten ingenious new startup innovations from around Aotearoa set to be supercharged in the virtual Climate Response Accelerator, a…

Who we worked with Te Puni Kōkiri What we did together 10-day sprint The Ministry has a broad mandate to support whānau Māori to thrive, through policy design and implementation, monitoring other government departments’ work, and relationship management and advocacy…

Who we worked with LINZ NZ What we did together GovTech Accelerator The problem Imagine if we had a 3D model of the entire country – managing land, understanding natural hazards, adapting to climate change, surveying, engineering and construction would…

Who we worked with DOC and Fisheries NZ What we did together GovTech Accelerator Key skills Applied innovation Read more Thousands petition for greater seabird protection – ODT The Antipodean Albatross population is critically endangered due to by-catchmortality in international…

Interview with Stuart Kay from Ballance Agri-Nutrients What we did together Ballance Agri-Nutrients is a partner with us for the Climate Response Accelerator 2024 Stuart Kay, Innovation Lead at Ballance In the heart of New Zealand’s agricultural sector, innovation isn’t…

After successfully exiting her first venture, I Love Pies, Jessie Stanley wanted her next chapter to really matter. A food technologist with deep experience in product development, she’d spent years inside the food industry and had seen firsthand the scale…

Emily Blythe started her founder’s journey at an early age and we started working with her when she joined our first Venture Up young founders programme back in 2015. Emily has gone on to have a very impressive founder’s journey…

JOINT MEDIA RELEASE: Suva, Fiji – 17 July 2025 In a major boost to Fiji’s financial services landscape, the UN Capital Development Fund, UN Development Programme, Reserve Bank of Fiji, Mastercard and New Zealand innovation agency Creative HQ, have collaborated to unveil…

From Lab Tech in an accelerator to CEO of an accelerator company in 6 months, Carlos Chambers’ founder journey started off with a bang. Over the years, he learned a lot about leadership and went on to create and lead…

Interview with Lachlan Nixon, Founding Partner at Motion Capital What we did together Motion Capital is a partner with us for the Climate Response Accelerator 2024 Chris Harris & Lachlan Nixon of Motion Capital Motion Capital is a new venture…

Tal Meser always wanted to start a business. But he dropped out of University and found himself in debt and “living off noodles” when he came to Creative HQ and started working with us. After a couple of startup attempts,…

Who we worked with Plunket What we did together T7 Masterclass in Innovation Recognising their need to innovate, Whānau Āwhina Plunket had two objectives: to grow their internal innovation capability by developing innovative skill sets and to explore different funding…

For Sasha Lockley, the founder of Money Sweet Spot, starting a fintech wasn’t about disrupting markets, it was about making fixing debt more human. Her mission is deeply personal: to create “the best place in the world to get out…

Investor, advisor, director – Trent’s done it all and Creative HQ has been there since the beginning. Optimal Usability Origins Trent and his co-founder Sam Ng met during their time together at Unisys back in the early 2000’s. Their respective…

Ideation is an activity that every person engages in almost every day without even realising it. When you’re weighing the options of what to have for dinner or considering which route will get you home quicker, you’re ideating. Cool, right?…

Ideation is a process in which you create a large number of diverse ideas, with the intention of quantity over quality. Common techniques include mind mapping, storyboarding and brainstorming, but sometimes using the same methods over and over again can stifle…

How do you know if you’ve got a winning idea? If you think you might have a winning idea, start by running it through a market validation process.  Testing the market is an effective way to tell if your idea is worth…

Chances are that you have encountered at least one of these terms throughout your career, but do you really know what they mean? We’ve put together a quick cheat sheet to help you navigate your way through the innovation jargon….

Chances are that you have encountered at least one of these terms throughout your career, but do you really know what they mean? We’ve put together a quick cheat sheet to help you navigate your way through the innovation jargon….

We’re lucky enough to already be set up for remote working: we offer working from home options for our team, and we often work remotely with clients from around the globe. To help you get started, we’ve put together a…

Powering a Smarter Future for Energy Rethinking the Last Mile For most of us, energy begins and ends at the switch but behind the scenes, the last mile of delivery is the most expensive, inefficient, and carbon-intensive part of the…

At Creative HQ, we have been supporting founders for yonks. Nearly 20 years to be exact. Over this time we’ve run a wide range of startup support programmes: from incubators to accelerators and things in between. We’ve supported all kinds…

Connecting global economies and making investing more accessible for Kiwis A bold vision When Jai Goradia and his co-founders started Indus, a New Zealand-based Fintech company, his vision was bold: to open India’s financial markets to the world. For the…