Houston expert: How to navigate the innovation journey — from PoC to MVP

guest column

This Houston expert describes the main phases central to any innovation journey. Photo courtesy of Slalom

As a technologist, one thing I learned early in my career about the technology landscape is its constant improvements and I understood that companies who kept up with those changes remain successful and competitive. However, only companies mastering a disciplined innovation framework are truly able to harness the power of emerging tech to help them solve their most complex business challenges.

Innovative solutions come in all shapes and sizes, but not all of them should come to life. Specifically, when considering digital solutions, there are a few widely accepted innovation approaches in the product engineering field. This quick guide describes the main phases central to any innovation journey.

Feasibility Study

Ideating can be fun but executing a feasibility study will ground you on what will work and what may still be science fiction. The thought here is to spend two to four weeks doing research and talking to experts to answer a few key questions that will help you determine the feasibility of your idea or concept. Through the study, you will learn how to look at it from both a technology and a business perspective. More importantly, to answer the question 'Is it even possible to accomplish your goal with this technology?'

A subject matter expert (SME) will quickly tell you yes or no and why. If you find the technology is indeed suitable, then you will move on to evaluate the business feasibility. Does it make financial sense? Does it work within established business policies? Will there be a healthy Return On Investment (ROI) within an acceptable timeline? If you find positive responses to those questions, then you should feel confident to move on to a Proof of Concept (PoC) or even jump to a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). On the other hand, if either the technology is not feasible or the solution doesn't make business sense, then you've just saved yourself a lot of time, budget, and possibly headaches.

Proof of Concept

This phase is about testing the theory and proving the hypothesis, technically speaking. You'll need to go through a Proof of Concept if the technology solution you have in mind hasn't been tested in either a lab setting or in the field. Thinking outside of the box and innovating is all about trying new approaches and solving problems in a novel way, so you'll have to spend the time and budget ensuring it will work as expected. However, you must be very careful to not get carried away.

A proper PoC should take four to six weeks, max. It should help you quickly determine whether the technology will live up to its promise or if you need to pivot to another approach. Building a team with the right skillset is vital to this process because they are the ones evaluating the proposed solution and comparing it to the expected outcomes. Any signs of discord should empower the team to stop the project, saving further investment, and should help you decide if another approach is even possible. If all criteria has been met, then move on to the MVP stage.

Minimum Viable Product

At this point, you have confirmed the solution you imagined works and you are ready to unlock its potential. But you must start small. You must prioritize all the features you want this product to have and decide what the core functionality should be. This is important because if you choose too many features to start with, you may initially spend too much money and time and may even miss a window of business opportunity you may have lined up. Hence the name of the MVP, it is a product that employs the minimum time, money, and features while still being a viable product.

In summary, if you have an innovative idea for a technology solution, I recommend you first determine whether it's feasible, both technology and business wise, through a short and focused study. If feasible, then you can put that concept to the test through a PoC and determine its desirability. If this product is indeed desirable, then moving into building an MVP will help you understand its viability – and that is how you can successfully innovate while keeping risks at bay.


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Alfredo Arvide is the director for the products and innovation practice at Slalom Consulting in Houston, where he helps clients solve their most complex business challenges by leveraging emerging technologies and applying innovative technology solutions.

This week's roundup of Houston innovators includes Alfredo Arvide of Slalom Consulting, Allison Post of the Texas Heart Institute, and Jeff Price of Pronto Pay. Courtesy photos

3 Houston innovators to know this week

who's who

Editor's note: In this week's roundup of Houston innovators to know, I'm introducing you to three local innovators across industries — tech consulting, health care, and fintech — recently making headlines in Houston innovation.

Alfredo Arvide, senior principal within product engineering at Slalom Consulting

Should you launch an app? Or just a web page? This consultant weighs in with his advice. Photo courtesy of Slalom

Tech founders have a lot of decisions to make, and Alfredo Arvide of Slalom Consulting wrote a guest column for InnovationMap to help advise on a big one.

"One of the biggest decisions you'll have to make as an entrepreneur is whether you should host your product or service on the web, via an app, or through a webapp," he writes. "Product development has a million intricacies that will dictate – and sometimes demand – a specific route to market." Read more.

Allison Post, manager of innovation partnerships at the Texas Heart Institute

Allison Post joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to share what she's focused on in cardiac innovation. Photo courtesy of THI

In a perfect world, Houston's health care institutions work collaboratively on innovative health care solutions and the city soars as a major hub for life science innovation. That perfect world is Allison Post's goal. As Texas Heart Institute's manager of innovation partnerships, she is in charge of supporting THI innovators and connecting the institute with the rest of the city.

"I only see just phenomenal things for Houston, and what I really want is for the Texas Medical Center to become even more interconnected. We've got to be able to transfer ideas and thoughts and intentions seamlessly between these institutions and right now there are a lot of barriers," Post says. "And I really think Texas Heart is hopefully going to serve as an example of how to take down those barriers." Read more and stream the episode.

Jeff Price, founder and CEO of Pronto Pay

This Houston startup has an app for helping employees get a portion of their paychecks before payday. Photo via Pexels

So much of the country lives paycheck to paycheck, and Jeff Price saw a business opportunity to help out employees who need an advance on their wages. He founded Pronto Pay in the first quarter of 2021. The software aims to connect hourly works with transparent access to wages earned before pay day without disrupting the employers' books.

"When you think about it, payroll hasn't changed in nearly two centuries. As far as we can remember, you get paid weekly or bi-weekly. And that's precisely the point we're trying to solve," Price says. Read more.

Should you launch an app? Or just a web page? This consultant weighs in with his advice. Photo courtesy of Slalom

Web page or app? Houston expert shares his tips for launching your online platform

guest column

One of the biggest decisions you'll have to make as an entrepreneur is whether you should host your product or service on the web, via an app, or through a webapp. In this quick guide, I'll go over a few tips to help you narrow down the options and make an informed decision.

First, allow me to explain each of these terms. In this context, I am assuming your big idea is either a product or service which your customer base will consume in a digital format. The question is, do you deliver your product or service via a regular webpage (web), does it require robust native application functionality (app), or can it be a hybrid model where the app runs on browser (webapp).

Certainly, if you can sell your product or services through a simple online store, then the debate is over: you should just web. If you are just selling a new gadget, for example, you don't need an app nor a webapp. E-Commerce has come such a long way that a simple webpage will suffice.

However, if that is not your situation, then here's three main considerations to help you decide between building an app or a webapp.

Native hardware required

If your product or service will use a hardware component from your audience's mobile device or tablet, such as the GPS, the Camera, the Microphone, or the Gyroscope, then you should heavily lean towards building a native app.

There are web frameworks that will allow you to gain access to a devices' camera or GPS via a webapp, but none are as stable, reliable, or robust as using a native app framework.

The question then becomes, what operating system do you develop your native app in: Apple's iOS, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows, other or all of them?

Keep in mind there are platforms – such as Xamarin – that enable you to develop in multiple native app ecosystems simultaneously, however, deciding the platform(s) will affect your timeline, budget and audience reach. Also know that if your product or service can or should be accessible offline, then that reinforces your native app decision and eliminates a webapp given they require connectivity to run on a browser.

Universal adoption expected

In contrast, if you are looking to sign-up a broad audience then you should lean towards building a webapp.

All devices, whether mobile, tablets or laptops, have sophisticated and modern web browsers that can easily run webapps. Therefore, if you don't want to worry about deciding between different platforms, then by building a universal webapp that is compatible with all popular browsers all your users will have immediate access.

This route also bypasses all the requirements you must meet and the policies you must comply with to publish your native app to communities such as Apple's App Store or Google Play.

Even better you can update and maintain your webapp at your own pace, not having to rely on Apple's or Google's approval and publish/update schedules.

Investment tolerance 

Now, if you gathered major seed funding or hit it big in a series A round giving you a higher upfront investment tolerance, then I'd advise you to go the native app route.

The aforementioned Apple and Google native app marketplaces, albeit strict, offer amazing features that you would not be able to leverage going the webapp route. Your customer experience will almost certainly be higher going native app, which will increase your ROI, promote repeat subscribers and overall success.

But this route will be more expensive than webapp, especially if you do decide to offer it on multiple major platforms. Hence, if you have the budget, go for it and launch natively. If your investment tolerance is more reserved, then start with a webapp, and simply iterate until you are forced to go native.

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This quick guide is by no means an exhaustive list of considerations. Product development has a million intricacies that will dictate – and sometimes demand – a specific route to market. Yet, if you ask yourself a few of the questions I laid out, you will be able to make an informed decision guiding your commercialization strategy as you kick off your startup journey.

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Alfredo Arvide is a senior principal within product engineering at Slalom Consulting in Houston, where he helps clients tackle their most complex business challenges by applying innovative technology solutions.

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UH breakthrough moves superconductivity closer to real-world use

Energy Breakthrough

University of Houston researchers have set a new benchmark in the field of superconductivity.

Researchers from the UH physics department and the Texas Center for Superconductivity (TcSUH) have broken the transition temperature record for superconductivity at ambient pressure. The accomplishment could lead to more efficient ways to generate, transmit and store energy, which researchers believe could improve power grids, medical technologies and energy systems by enabling electricity to flow without resistance, according to a release from UH.

To break the record, UH researchers achieved a transition temperature 151 Kelvin, which is the highest ever recorded at ambient pressure since the discovery of superconductivity in 1911.

The transition temperature represents the point just before a material becomes superconducting, where electricity can flow through it without resistance. Scientists have been working for decades to push transition temperature closer to room temperature, which would make superconducting technologies more practical and affordable.

Currently, most superconductors must be cooled to extremely low temperatures, making them more expensive and difficult to operate.

UH physicists Ching-Wu Chu and Liangzi Deng published the research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month. It was funded by Intellectual Ventures and the state of Texas via TcSUH and other foundations. Chu, founding director and chief scientist at TcSUH, previously made the breakthrough discovery that the material YBCO reaches superconductivity at minus 93 K in 1987. This helped begin a global competition to develop high-temperature superconductors.

“Transmitting electricity in the grid loses about 8% of the electricity,” Chu, who’s also a professor of physics at UH and the paper’s senior author, said in a news release. “If we conserve that energy, that’s billions of dollars of savings and it also saves us lots of effort and reduces environmental impacts.”

Chu and his team used a technique known as pressure quenching, which has been adapted from techniques used to create diamonds. With pressure quenching, researchers first apply intense pressure to the material to enhance its superconducting properties and raise its transition temperature.

Next, researchers are targeting ambient-pressure, room-temperature superconductivity of around 300 K. In a companion PNAS paper, Chu and Deng point to pressure quenching as a promising approach to help bridge the gap between current results and that goal.

“Room-temperature superconductivity has been seen as a ‘holy grail’ by scientists for over a century,” Rohit Prasankumar, director of superconductivity research at Intellectual Ventures, said in the release. “The UH team’s result shows that this goal is closer than ever before. However, the distance between the new record set in this study and room temperature is still about 140 C. Closing this gap will require concerted, intentional efforts by the broader scientific community, including materials scientists, chemists, and engineers, as well as physicists.”

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Rice University to lead AI conferences in Paris this spring and summer

where to be

Houston’s own Rice University will host a series of conferences on artificial intelligence in Paris, France, starting this month. The series will tackle the impact and possibilities of AI in fields like econometrics and online privacy security.

“Artificial intelligence is transforming the global economy and raising profound questions about how technology intersects with society,” Caroline Levander, Rice’s vice president for global strategy, said in a news release. “By convening scholars from multiple disciplines and countries in Paris, Rice is helping shape the international conversation about how AI should be developed, governed and used.”

The four conferences in Paris aim for a multi-disciplinary approach that tackles aspects of AI from diverging angles. The conferences come as part of Rice’s increased partnership with French researchers at the Université Paris Sciences & Lettres. The two institutions have formed a binary star system of academic sharing and support.

“Paris has quickly become one of the most important global hubs for artificial intelligence research, entrepreneurship and policy,” Levander said. “For Rice, having a presence in the city allows our scholars to engage directly with that ecosystem while building collaborations that connect Europe and the United States around the future of AI.”

The conferences will be held at the Rice Global Paris Center. Topics scheduled are:

Emerging Topics in Operations Management: Platforms, Blockchains and AI

April 27-29

This conference will focus on how companies like Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, and DoorDash can use blockchain ledgers to deliver goods and services more transparently. It will also look at tokenized incentives, presumably forms of cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens in the app space.

Econometrics and AI

May 5-7

This conference will explore how AI can be used in various economic statistical models and practices.

Human Flourishing in the Age of AI

June 3-5

This conference will be a collaboration between engineers and philosophers about the ethics and impact of AI on the lives of its users.

On the Crossroads of AI and Society: Incentives, Privacy and Fairness

July 15-16

This conference will consider how to stakeholders can ensure AI’s actions most benefit people, particularly in the fields of healthcare education, energy and public policy.

Houston claims 19% of Texas’ new live-work-play growth

by the numbers

In Texas, Houston is a big player in the live-work-play real estate movement.

A new 21-city analysis from coworking marketplace CoworkingCafe shows the Houston area added five live-work-play projects—mixed-use developments with residential, office and recreational components—over the past decade.

From 2016 to 2025, Houston accounted for 19 percent of Texas’ new live-work-play inventory, the analysis shows. Among the new local developments were Arrive Upper Kirby, St. Andrie, and The Laura:

  • Arrive Upper Kirby, which was sold in 2021 for $182 million, offers more than 61,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space adjacent to apartments and offices. The 13-story, 265,000-square-foot project was completed in 2017.
  • St. Andrie, a 32-acre, mixed-use community, was completed in 2019. The apartment-anchored development includes an H-E-B grocery store and 37,000 square feet of office space.
  • The Laura, spanning 110,000 square feet, was completed in 2023. Among the apartment complex’s amenities is a coworking space.

According to Northspyre, a software provider for real estate developers, live-work-play projects enable people to meet their needs, such as housing, workplaces, stores, restaurants, and recreation facilities, in a single place.

A total of 542 live-work-play developments opened between 2016 and 2025 in the 21 cities, with another 69 in the pipeline for 2026, CoworkingCafe says. Among major markets, New York City made up the largest share (119) of new live-work-play developments from 2016 to 2025.

The Houston area’s five projects were built in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2024, and 2025, CoworkingCafe data indicates, with another project scheduled for completion next year. The Greater Houston Partnership recently highlighted four mixed-use projects taking shape in the region, but only one of them is scheduled to be finished in 2027. It can take two to five years or more to complete a mixed-use development.

Of the five Houston developments finished in the past decade, 56 percent of the space went toward multifamily units, 29 percent toward offices, and 16 percent toward retail, CoworkingCafe says.

As noted by the Houston-Galveston Area Council, economic development in the 21st century “is about cultivating quality live-work-play environments that attract, retain, and grow a diverse and skilled population. Employers and businesses are increasingly choosing to make long-term investments in places that connect and engage people to strengthen economic competitiveness and promote innovation.”

With eight completed projects, Austin led construction of live-work-play developments in Texas from 2016 to 2025, according to CoworkingCafe. Dallas, which welcomed five live-work-play developments during that period, tied with Houston. San Antonio data wasn’t available.

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