Detroit’s Technology Opportunity

It’s re-imagining Detroit.

The future of the Motor City—these leaders say—needs to be fueled by entrepreneurs and technology.

“We think that the digital economy is alive and well and we think it’s a tremendous time to be an entrepreneur in here in Detroit,” said Josh Linkner of Detroit Venture Partners.

Techonomy Detroit brought together some of the top minds of the industry. Josh Linkner—the founder of EPrize—is a huge proponent of technology-driven change–and what it can mean for Detroit.

“Tech is a great way to go because tech entrepreneurship, these companies can scale fast. They’re capital efficient. They don’t really require as much money to start and if they take off, they create thousands of jobs and create an enormous economic impact in our cities,” Linkner told Detroit 2020.

“We found a lot of people in the tech wanted to come to Detroit, especially those who are really thinking sort of patriotically about America’s future.  They know that tech tools are transformational but they’ve gotta be applied in the places where we need it most and Detroit is, rightfully perceived as a place that has more needs than a lot of other parts of the American economy,” said David Kirkpatrick, Techonomy Founder & CEO.

Wayne State University hosted the Detroit Economic Club for this daylong event.

It brought leaders from Cisco, IBM, FaceBook and Twitter together with venture capitalists, educators and others.

AOL co-founder Steve Case is now advocating a fix to the high-skilled immigration system in the United States to make it easier for foreign students to remain here after they graduate.

“These are the people that do create the Google’s and the Ford’s and some of the great companies that do create thousands or tens of thousands of jobs so trying to make sure we win the battle for talent globally is really, really important,” said Case, who is now the CEO of Revolution LLC.

Grasping challenges and opportunities as Detroit and the metro region chart a path to the future.

Click here to go to the Techonomy Detroit website.