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

Who we worked with Hutt City Council What we did together Co-design In June 2019, Hutt City Council (HCC) declared a climate emergency and set an organisational goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 to match Aotearoa New Zealand’s targets. The…

Guest post by David Stephen, Lead Author, NZ Better Business Cases Templates & Guidance Chances are that if you’ve been involved in a business case in New Zealand over the last 15 years, you will have come across the Better…

Who we worked with Provincial Government of Bataan (PGB) What we did together GovTech Accelerator In 2024, with the support of the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Creative HQ kicked off a GovTech Accelerator Programme with the…

Who we worked with Department of Conservation (DOC) What we did together GovTech Accelerator At Creative HQ, we believe in pushing the boundaries of public sector innovation, and the 2024 GovTech Accelerator was another example of this pursuit. Over the…

Health NZ has rolled out Heidi, an Australian-built AI clinical scribe, to 27 hospitals through its HealthX programme (the NZ Herald also has good background). The Hawke’s Bay pilot results are worth noting: documentation time per patient dropped from around…

The Wāhine Fuelled Tech community meets four times during the year, and the latest gathering at Creative HQ drew an energised crowd of people building the creative tech sector. The room was buzzing with wāhine and industry allies championing each…

Wellington – 1 September 2021: The 2021 GovTech Accelerator will help eight forward-looking cross-Government teams step out of their daily routine and adopt start-up thinking to address some of Aotearoa’s most pressing issues, says Dr Ganesh Nana, Ambassador of the NZ GovTech Accelerator…

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…

The three-year sponsorship deal between Wellington-based innovation hub Creative HQ and the Westpac NZ Government Innovation Fund will allow Creative HQ to support teams of public sector innovators through the NZ GovTech Accelerator programme. This gives participants the confidence and…

Behind every thriving startup ecosystem is a network of organisations that connect capital with opportunity. In Wellington, that network is collaborative, well-structured and increasingly outward-looking. This month, we’re spotlighting key investor organisations committing capital into the region: As New Zealand’s…

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…

Creative HQ wraps Creative Tech Activate Not all founders are ready to commit to a full accelerator or a longer-term incubator. But every founder needs somewhere to start – a place to test their ideas, find their footing, and connect…

Wellington, 27 April 2022 Creative HQ was established in 2003 through Wellington’s economic development agency, at the time called Positively Wellington Business, and now known as WellingtonNZ. It was tasked with supporting the development of high-growth new businesses, with a…

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…

The GovTech Accelerator is not for the faint of heart. Our cohort is taking a new approach to problem-solving in the public sector. This requires the application of new way of working to big, complex public sector issues to create fit-for-purpose…

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…

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…

Projects worth pursuing never exist in isolation. If there’s someone who wants the solution that you’re creating, it stands to reason that there are people who will care about it along the way.  In the context of government, this can…

Who we worked with DTI, Philippines and G2G What we did together A series of sprints Key Skills Problem discovery, Ideation, Prototyping Read more NZ aids Philippines in ease of doing business – Philippine Star In 2016, the World Bank’s…

Who we worked with Local businesses What we did together Online and in-person workshop Skills Applied innovation, problem discovery Read more “Wellington businesses to be provided free access to innovation thinking” – Wellington NZ In 2020 more than ever we…

Who we worked with Logan City Council What we did together T7 Masterclass programme Key Skills Applied Innovation, Innovation delivery, Thought leadership Logan City Council has big plans to fast-forward the city’s growth as an innovative, dynamic, sustainable city of the…

For the past 4 years Creative HQ has been running the GovTech Accelerator, helping local and central government to use creativity and innovation to solve problems. Our goal is still the same: to leverage innovation to drive better outcomes for…

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…

Wellington was buzzing with energy as hundreds of innovators, entrepreneurs and industry leaders came together for Fintech Hui Taumata 2026 in Wellington. This is New Zealand’s flagship fintech event, bringing together leaders from government, financial services, technology and startups to collaborate…

The next big startup idea often comes from repeatedly feeling the same pain over and over.  Like many business owners, Kate and Jonny found financial reporting confusing, stressful and difficult to translate into everyday decisions. They tried every product on…

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…

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…

Meet Feijoa There’s a quiet behavioural problem at the heart of personal finance: saving requires sustained, deliberate effort over decades, while spending requires almost none. Wellington fintech Feijoa is built on the premise that this imbalance can be fixed. Feijoa’s…

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…

Who we worked with LINZ, National emergy management agency What we did together GovTech Accelerator During an emergency, reliable geospatial data is a critical asset for a successful response. This crucial information isn’t always easy to find, analyse or take…

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…

Genesia Girls have been hosting workshops and events like Hackathons, Create-a-thons over the last year, bringing together high school female and gender-diverse students to explore creative technologies such as game design, animation, 3D modelling and web design. Over these weekends,…

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…

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,…

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…

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has seen an increase in workplace reliance on digital tools and embracing of the remote work model. Some companies have been operating 100% remotely for the past two years, working with teams that are…

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?…

Wellington has a thriving community for innovation, startups and all things tech. Behind the scenes, there is a dynamic network of developers, designers, founders and curious learners who are coming together to share ideas, build projects and support one another’s…

Creative HQ is your place of innovation. We help people around the world transform their ideas into real-world solutions. How? By giving them the energy and skills to innovate. Whether you have a problem to solve in government, hunger for…

What do CVs, online recipes and programme applications have in common? Many of them can be terribly hard to read and make it hard to find what you’re looking for. As a selection team, we see hundreds of applications, and…

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…