About Hackworks
Our mission as innovation strategy experts is to help our clients achieve digital transformation and build innovation competency and confidence in their workforces
At Hackworks, we believe in the power of the crowd.
Our innovation strategy experts use co-creation and challenge-based learning techniques to produce innovation programs and events where perspectives, inspiration and ideas are shared, minds are expanded and changed, new connections are made, and more resonant solutions are found than any of us could create individually.
We leverage the framework of hackathons to design and execute custom events and programs that deliver on real business objectives related to R&D, technology exploration, corporate venture, digital transformation, innovation culture, skill building, talent brand, brand positioning and client engagement or onboarding. We work with clients in health/life sciences , banking/finance, professional services, government, real estate , non-profits and more.

Our Origin Story
In 2015, Hackworks emerged out of XMG Studio, now a defunct award winning mobile game company who most notably created the popular Cows vs. Aliens game. XMG was already reaping the benefits of running internal hackathons and in fact, Cows vs. Aliens was a hackathon success story. Born out of a 48-hour hackathon, it went on to be downloaded millions of times and get one of Apple’s prized features. 2014 was the turning point of XMG and the invisible birth of Hackworks with the successes of the Great Canadian Appathon (GCA), a 48-hour game development competition open to Canadian college and university students from coast-to-coast. A CGA judge and Government of Canada official contacted us to produce a similar hackathon aiming to encourage Canadian programmers, innovators, and entrepreneurs to develop apps and websites based on Canada’s vast open data resources available through the federal Open Data portal. The Canadian Open Data Experience (CODE) was born, the Government of Canada’s first affiliated hackathon. After stellar success from CODE, our phone didn’t stop ringing from companies calling us to help them do a hackathon. As a response to this demand, the XMG executives took the innovation strategy and hackathon experts out of the company to form Hackworks.
350
Activations
2,000
Innovations Inspired
120,000
Innovators Engaged
Our Values
Customer Commitment
Innovation
Excellence
Adaptability
Teamwork
Our Past Work

Cloud Sprint
The largest Alphabet Company engaged Hackworks to help them connect with their enterprise clients in a more in-depth way, help them understand the capabilities of their Cloud Platform, and to build deeper relationships between the client and The Alphabet Company’s team of engineers.

Elevate
