When Brian Richards, managing director at Accenture, launched the company's Houston innovation hub, he had a team of about a half dozen and 13,500 square feet of space. Now, his crew has surpassed a hundred people, and it's about time the hub's space grows as well.
Accenture is building out the rest of the floor the hub currently resides on. After this process, which is currently ongoing, the hub will be nearly 30,000 square feet.
"Since we've launched, we've been fully booked," Richards tells InnovationMap. "We've had more than 400 workshops with various companies — from both here in Houston and globally."
The first phase of the expansion will allow for Richards and his team to better provide clients — usually large companies — with their services, which is everything from current design thinking to software development services. Construction is expected to be completed later this year.
However, the second phase of this growth project includes the creation of Houston's ICS Cyber Fusion Center to address Accenture clients' growing demand for cybersecurity within industrial capabilities. Currently, the timeline for phase two has not been defined, Richards says.
Accenture's Houston innovation hub hosts its clients with workshops that allow for strategic brainstorming for innovative solutions to problems occurring at the company or within the industry. Most of the hub's clients are within the energy industry. After identifying the problems and coming up with solutions, the hub's team members are able to offer engineering and design services from prototypes to scaling up and implementation, even passing off the client to Accenture's wider scope of services.
"It's a strong recognition of how digital innovation continues to thrive here in Houston and the role Accenture has had in helping develop that ecosystem and supporting it through the innovation hub," Richards says.
Accenture's Houston innovation hub regularly hosts business executives for workshops that allow for hands-on digital technology discovery.Courtesy of Accenture