The Current State of Aotearoa's Wellbeing Innovation Landscape
Our communities are under strain. If we’re not living with some form of mental distress, it’s likely we are only one degree of separation from someone who is. The numbers of people experiencing mental distress in Aotearoa is significant and increasing.
Around 1.25 million people in Aotearoa experience, or are vulnerable to, mental distress every year, yet 850,000 have few avenues to lean on for support.
What needs to happen for Aotearoa to reduce this distress, and meet the needs of people who are experiencing it?
Over the past year we set out to shine a light on what’s happening in wellbeing innovation in Aotearoa. We took a narrow view initially, working through Ember Group’s network, looking for new initiatives with the core purpose to improve mental and emotional wellbeing, whatever the intervention.
We found start-ups and innovators across the country. Most are early in their journey, researching and prototyping new wellbeing approaches. Many unrecognised by the publicly funded mental health sector. All are led by passionate people and are starting to impact their communities. The majority of these are also self-funded, actively seeking capital.
The biggest insight we’ve had over the past year is there is no specific wellbeing community, rather there are a constellation of networks— digital, regional, schools-based, and Māori and Pacifica networks—to name a few. There are tenuous links between these different communities but not yet a sense of a collective movement. We found that these innovators are especially disconnected from the public mental health sector.
Looking through the lens of Te Whare Tapa Wha, there are also many people having a positive impact on wellbeing from the pou, other than hinengaro (mental health). These initiatives focused on combinations of wairua (spiritual), tinana (physical), whānau (family), and even whenua (the environment), alongside hinengaro. We will be exploring this wider, more integrated space, in the coming year.
Introducing the wellbeing innovation landscape
Our first step has been to sketch a picture of the landscape of wellbeing start-ups in Aotearoa. We took this narrow approach initially to manage our comfort with describing and sizing the wellbeing innovation space. Too wide in our definition and it becomes hard to find and describe. We’ve made a start, but we’ve barely scratched the surface.
Our key insights so far:
Diverse talent is bringing energy and creative ideas to the challenge, but not enough
We found over 100 new initiatives or start-ups and talked to passionate innovators highly committed to shifting Aotearoa’s wellbeing challenges. They bring diverse experience from clinical backgrounds, non-health careers, and work in their communities. Most of these leaders have lived experience, or a strong connection to it, and are passionate about helping others that experience the same—sometimes to the detriment of their own health.
The vast majority are early in their journey and financially fragile. Most are self-funded as they research and prototype new wellbeing approaches.
While further work needs to be done to uncover the full breadth of mahi in communities across Aotearoa, we need a lot more innovators to help us meet the need across Aotearoa.
There is a stark gap between the ambition for wellbeing in Aotearoa and the reality
Through the mental health and addictions Inquiry, people with lived experience, their whanau, and people working in the health system across our communities built a vision. A vision for a groundswell of widespread, accessible, culturally appropriate, alternative approaches to wellbeing provided across society.
From what we have observed, there is a stark gap between the ambition for wellbeing in Aotearoa and the resource and support for innovators to make it a reality.
Being an entrepreneur is hard. Being a wellbeing innovator is arguably harder. They face specific challenges such as proving and improving wellbeing impact, fear of trialling and adopting of new approaches to wellbeing, and limited paying customers. Markets for services are fledgling beyond government, and commercial priorities can be in direct conflict to making solutions widely accessible. The current support and funding environment is not set up to meet these challenges.
If we are to make a dent in the scale of the problem in Aotearoa, we need to look at how the entire environment enables innovation, from funding to markets and business support programmes. How can we mobilise more innovators from different walks of life to bring their talent to the challenge? How do we promote a collaborative, rather than a competitive spirit? How can we support safe research and development that currently goes unfunded?
Digital and non-digital innovations play a part
To cater to a wide audience, we need more than just scalable innovation, we need diverse innovation. That means diversity in the philosophy of wellbeing, the interventions, and the channels to meet people where they are.
There is enormous potential in the rise of digital solutions. There are also some spectacular examples of non-digital initiatives, and these will always be essential. We found wellbeing innovators are working right across the spectrum from next generation technology to in-person initiatives, and many combinations in between. Half are scalable digital solutions, a quarter digitally enabled, and a further quarter fully in-person.
How we define success, will shape how we get there
The story we tell about success in wellbeing will heavily shape how we approach solving it. If we define success narrowly as emotional health, or sustainable wellbeing businesses, then we will limit our collective potential right from the start. No doubt these solutions are part of the puzzle. There are some fantastic examples in Aotearoa that can deliver impact, scale and attract private investment. But they can’t be the whole solution.
Instead, we see success as a diversity of innovation leading to more accessible, effective wellbeing initiatives, products and service that improve wellbeing in all our communities across Aotearoa. That will need diversity in the who, where, what and how of innovation.
We need initiatives to be supported by the most appropriate capital, business model and support for that specific context, population, and intervention. And it means including more cultural, integrated and collaborative solutions in addition to the start-up community we’ve highlighted here.
In the coming year we’ll be exploring this more, and connecting within, and beyond, this initial group. We invite you to connect with us as part of this exciting journey to discover, reimagine, and redefine how we improve our wellbeing across Aotearoa.