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.

innovation strategy

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

We are customer-focused. We build trustworthy connections with our clients and we go above and beyond to help them meet their objectives.

Innovation

We strive for continuous improvement and innovation. We are always open to finding new ways to solve problems and drive change.

Excellence

We set high standards for ourselves, and together we can do amazing things.
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Adaptability

We are flexible and adapt to the ever-changing needs of our clients, the market, and the moment.

Teamwork

We thrive on collaboration and leverage the collective knowledge and skills of our team.

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.

ElevateHQ Sign

Elevate

The Elevate team, working with founding partner TD, approached Hackworks to help create Toronto’s biggest hackathon. Over a 48-hour hackathon at MaRS, more than 500 hackers worked tirelessly rallying behind one theme: How can we use data and technology to make Toronto a more inclusive, safe and vibrant city in which to live and work.
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TD Tech Jam

The TD Think Digital Tech Jam developed and executed in partnership with Hackworks provided a fun and safe environment to expose to expose TD employees to some of the new emerging technologies so they can see how they could be applied to meet the needs of TD employees and more broadly to the banking experience.
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