Houston Innovation District

McNair Project

Houston Innovation District
Project Information
Project Title	Houston Innovation District
Owner	Ben Baldazo, Dylan Dickens, Joe Reilly, Taylor Jacobe
Start Date	9/20/2017
Deadline	10/27/2017
Primary Billing
Notes
Has project status	Active
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Project Summary

Mayor of Houston has asked us to make recommendations about how to create an innovation district in Houston

• Go through patent data, find people with patents
• Find people who have done R&D work
• Carve up the world of innovative people in terms of data
  • Find their needs
  • Turn it into some sort of office space requirement
  • Try to find where this office space would be, what it would look like

Summary of data and where to find it

Info we have:

• Startups (in Houston Entrepreneurship)
• Accelerators/Incubators (in Houston Entrepreneurship)
• Entrepreneurship Ecosystems (in Houston Entrepreneurship)
• Small Business (in Houston Entrepreneurship)
• VC (in E:\McNair\Projects\Innovation Districts\Houston Startup Ecosystem\VCData). VC locations have already been geocoded. For a final map, use info in "VC firms with address, basic sector info" to match sector and size with each VC firm. Bigger VC firms who invest in more relevant sectors should be emphasized more.
• Patents in Houston (in E:\McNair\Projects\Innovation Districts\Houston Startup Ecosystem > HoustonPatents.txt)
• Information on largest office spaces available (in E:\McNair\Projects\Innovation Districts\Houston Startup Ecosystem\Location data)
• US median income for 2000 and (estimated) for 2015 (in E:\McNair\Projects\Innovation Districts\Houston Startup Ecosystem\Location data)
• Educational Attainment (in section below)
• 15 best cafes in Houston (Projects\Innovation Districts\Houston Startup Ecosystem\Files to Geocode)
• Houston Industry Breakdown (in E:\McNair\Projects\Innovation Districts\Houston Startup Ecosystem ["Houston Gross Area Product by Industry", "Houston employment share by industry" excel files and "Industry breakdown..." text file.])
• Grant Data (in E:\McNair\Projects\Innovation Districts\Houston Startup Ecosystem\Texas Federal Grant Data. Can filter by county/city)

Info we are in the process of getting:

• Yelp data on cafes and restaurants within the 610 loop

Unknown:

• Other R&D data in Houston

Ideal Factors for an Innovation district

• Factors relating to best Innovation Districts:

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/312173269_fig15_Figure-19-Key-success-factors-for-innovation-district-development

Data wanted is in bold

Optimize Land Use and Placemaking

• Flexibility, responding to market preferences
  • Available office space/undeveloped land in Houston
  • Availability of capital
    • equity
    • VC
    • Investors of all kinds
• Infrastructure and land as a platform for experimentation
  • Flexibility of space and infrastructure
  • Zoning?
• Placemaking to achieve critical mass of real estate and commercial activity and authentic sense of place
  • Location, location, location

Strategy as a City of Innovation

• and leverage the regional innovation context
  • What we currently have going for us as a city- who is here and how can we leverage them?
    • R&D Data
    • Patent Data
• Prioritize attention on city wide eco-system and development and networking
  • Current Government benefits to improve innovation ecosystem
  • What would we ideally have to attract business?
• Grow and support existing innovation firms and activity
• Manage externalities that arise
  • Houston's risk preparedness
  • Competition?
• Adapt through cycles
  • Predictability of Houston's economy data?

Build the City's Innovation Brand

• Leverage city DNA and expertise in promoting innovation
  • Where is Houston at the forefront?
• Develop innovation brand as a broad identity and shared narrative
  • How can we market the city as an innovator? How do we gain that image?
• Invite others to feel and experience the innovation culture
  • How accessibile is Houston?
    • Public transportation
    • Travel costs: flying, lodging

A thought: Houston's key capabilities seem to be in Oil/Gas/Energy and Medicine. Can we start by portraying Houston as a leading innovator in those areas? Innovation district can start with our core capabilities

Location data

• Information on largest office spaces available, and on US median income for 2000 and (estimated) for 2015 are located in E:\McNair\Projects\Innovation Districts\Houston Startup Ecosystem\Location data.
• Office spaces for sale in the the zip codes listed below were compiled in "Office property listings..." in E:\McNair\Projects\Innovation Districts\Houston Startup Ecosystem\Location data. Included is acreage/square footage and address. Listings under "office space" that looked like houses were removed.
  • Listings pulled from zip codes:
    • 77002
    • 77003
    • 77004
    • 77005
    • 77006
    • 77007
    • 77008
    • 77009
    • 77019
    • 77098
    • 77030
    • 77027
    • 77025
    • 77046
    • 77024
    • 77056
    • 77057
    • 77401

Pulling Yelp Data

It seems entirely possible, though against the terms of service of yelp, to pull data from Houston centered searches for things like cafe's or bars. Peter J has done some work like this before with his "Chipotle" and "Starbucks" finder webapps and is working on creating a map / pulling the data from google or yelp to have the locations of all of these points of commerce within the 610 loop.

• Note: Using yelp data (and regressing things like reviews, new businesses and locations) havard business was able to project (with 30% correlation) the economic growth on a granular scale: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/18-022_0bb9b749-f275-41ff-899c-afd9109568ee.pdf
  • We may be able to produce something similar but less developed using density of restaurants in houston to find entrepreneurial / growth hotspots

Educational Attainment

• For the city of Houston,
  • High school graduate or higher, percent of persons age 25 years+, 2011-2015: 76.7%
  • Bachelor's degree or higher, percent of persons age 25 years+, 2011-2015: 30.4%

• For Harris County,
  • High school graduate or higher, percent of persons age 25 years+, 2011-2015: 79.6%
  • Bachelor's degree or higher, percent of persons age 25 years+, 2011-2015: 29.5%

• Compared to the rest of the US:
  • High school graduate or higher, percent of persons age 25 years+, 2011-2015 83.3% 86.7%
  • Bachelor's degree or higher, percent of persons age 25 years+, 2011-2015 20.4% 29.8%

source: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/harriscountytexas,houstoncitytexas,US/PST045216