Capability Building – Thinkplace NZ | WāhiWhakaaro

About us
Who we are

About ThinkPlace

Our People

Meet the change makers

How we work

Understand the ThinkPlace way of working
Services
Communication Design

Research & Insights

Education & Capability Building

Scaling & System Change

HCD & Service Design

Social Behaviour Change

Co-Design & Social Innovation

Strategy & Policy Design

Leadership & Culture
Communication Design

When it comes to creating strong engagement, it is important to know your audience so you can create a compelling narrative that captures the imagination and builds a shared desire for change. Creating powerful communications and a strong brand is essential to make impact.

Research & Insights

To best understand a complex problem, we must go directly to the people who are closest to it and who hold the strongest motivation to address it. Our designers bring deep expertise in qualitative and quantitative research to produce profound human insights. Through academic level research in real-world, rapidly-evolving contexts, we generate compelling insights that inform strategic evidence-based decision-making.

Education & Capability

We are living in a highly transitional and disruptive period. The challenges we face are more complex and interconnected than ever. To rise to these challenges, organisations must develop and implement new capabilities, technologies, and ways of working while many face capacity shortages, and widespread cognitive overload. Education providers must rethink curriculums, the student experience, and the value proposition for teachers to remain impactful into future.

Scaled System Change

There’s a lot that urgently needs to change in our world. We need change at scale, not piecemeal efforts. ThinkPlace has been seeking to master design in complex systems for nearly two decades, developing a toolkit for scaled system change that we’ve applied to some of the world’s biggest challenges. We enable exploration of systems through human perspectives, map relationships, constraints and opportunities, and identify viable pathways and initiatives to shift systems over time. Through highly effective brokering of disciplines, rapid sense-making and problem framing, and portfolio of experimentation, we engage ecosystems for change.

HCD & Service Design

We wholeheartedly believe in the principle that those for whom we design must be those with whom we design. As human-centred design (HCD) practitioners, we believe this because we know it works. HCD is a co-creative approach to problem-solving that places the people at the centre of the design process.

Social and Behaviour Change

Many of the challenges we face globally can be traced back to human behaviour, yet it’s not always clear why humans do the things that we do. In fact, scientists estimate that over 90% of behaviour is subconsciously motivated – influenced heavily by context and cognitive biases, and therefore often cannot be explained by logic alone. For this reason, conventional research methods like interviews and focus group discussions are insufficient in uncovering the core, underlying drivers of human behaviour.

ThinkPlace’s social and behaviour change (SBC) practice is committed to transforming human behaviour by deeply understanding what drives behaviour and deploying interventions and tactics that draw on psychology and behavioural economics to shift that behaviour in a constructive, sustainable way.

Innovation

Innovation continually disrupts and reinvents the fundamentals of how things work.

As with all disruptions, digital has created a mix of risk and opportunity that can’t be ignored. When digital innovation is well-connected to societal trends, strategic imperatives and the needs of people and communities, it delivers impact that transforms organisations, changes lives and powers a more sustainable future.

Strategy & Policy Design

The strategy and policy design service develops strategic or policy direction and charts the course towards that direction. A sharp sense of who you are and where you are heading is a powerful tool to give focus and align effort for increased effectiveness.

Leadership & Culture

Around the world governments, consortia, and organisations and assembling teams of highly-talented people to tackle wicked problems in high-pressure environments. Many of these teams fail for complex but preventable reasons.

These highly talented teams and individuals tend to be highly skilled with a clear sense of purpose, and push themselves to limits others simply are unable to achieve. This passion can drive people to keep pushing at this intensity for extended periods of time, especially when faced with a grand challenge, such as those in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sectors
Public Sector

Private Sector

Not-for-profit & Community Sector
Insights
Insights

ThinkTalks
Our work
Courses
Search

Let’s explore new directions
together.

Capability Building

Upskilling done your way.

We have carefully curated a group of courses that respond to the needs of people delivering positive change across Aotearoa. Grouped in three different categories, each with its own delivery model, you can find the right fit for you. Click on the categories below to explore the possibilities. Or, talk to us about a bespoke education experience for your organisation.

Course Guide 2025

The Project Accelerator Series

Cost: Starts at $500 per person per half-day (depending on approach).
Early Bird Cost: Group discounts available.
Location(s): Flexible locations- online or in-person.
Duration: Durations vary (see below).

Series of project-targeted modules centred on applied learning in service design. Ideal for teams who are seeking to strengthen their...

More

The Practice Foundations Series

Cost: $500-$1,650 per person (excl. GST).
Early Bird Cost: Group discounts available.
Location(s): Flexible locations- online or in-person.
Duration: Half-day, 1-day, and 2-day options.

1- and 2-day courses centred on the foundations of design for public good, ideal for teams who want to add...

More

The Masterclass Series (coming 2026)

Cost: COMING SOON
Early Bird Cost: COMING SOON
Location(s): Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland
Duration: COMING SOON

1- and 2-day public courses centred on thought leadership and emerging practice, ideal for practitioners and leaders who are looking...

More

Ready to
learn something new?

Let's chat