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Since observing the rise of billion-dollar Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0 now?) firms like GroupOn out of nothing from outside of Silicon Valley, I've felt we should nurture similar start-ups here. Pontiac is doing it, offering a workspace to incubate mobile technology developers...Detroit should follow suit. We have local talent that currently goes out West to work for such developers, but if we have the facilities here, given the low cost of living, perhaps some of them will catch the entrepreneurial bug and start some innovative ventures.
Into Detroit
12 years ago
The best thing about these types of companies is the reduced startup-costs. But I also see a major negative: if you're not the first to provide a solution, you're essentially out. In other words, I think we'll reach a critical mass of these types of jobs. Right now, elsewhere in the world, I think we're already approaching that point and so I'm not sure if this is essentially pursuing a dead end.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Ann Arbor has setup such an incubator in the Google building. I'm pretty sure it is run by Tech Transfer at U of M and possibly Center for Entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering. Maybe even SPARK is involved.
Finally, my last point about this is that the required talent isn't necessarily college-level. Picking up a programming book and signing up for a (typically free) developer account with companies like Apple or Google/Android and you can easily see that high schoolers can join in the success, as they already have. So maybe providing tutorial/getting started courses at these incubators like you would find at a community college would be a another way to get people involved and stick around in the area.