OpTech’s President and CEO, Ronia Kruse was recently featured in the Detroiter Magazine, alongside other industry experts. The article posed a question to each visionary about the role talent played on Detroit’s failed bid to host Amazon’s second world headquarters. Amazon cited several reasons why Detroit was not a contender, but the main reason was that our city lacks existing talent. So the question is this: What comes first, talent or business? 

Ronia said the following: 

“Certainly some talent follows companies but more often, companies will follow talent. In fact, studies by renowned economists have proven this theory.  The unemployment rate is under 4%, which is extremely low; IT and Engineering positions are below 2%. Clearly the talent pool in the U.S. is in a crisis. Michigan has some of the finest universities in the country but is being challenged with retaining talent in Michigan, as it is losing about 36% of its students to other states. Michigan is making strides to change this paradigm via the Marshall Plan for Talent and ChooseMichigan.org initiative – programs that are building talent pipelines, retaining students and upskilling talent.”
​