Bill Ford focuses on technology
"When I talked about this stuff in speeches 10 years ago, people thought I was some sort of Bolshevik," the executive chairman of Ford Motor Co. told the Free Press in a rare interview last week. Vindication aside, Ford is worried that southeastern Michigan is lagging behind other regions in developing new technologies that will revolutionize the global automotive industry in years to come.
He plans to call for an intensive effort to identify and recruit cutting-edge technology firms to metro Detroit — even tapping high-powered business leaders to get personally involved — in a speech Thursday to the Detroit Regional Chamber's annual policy conference on Mackinac Island.
"I've spent a lot of time recently in Silicon Valley, visiting companies and venture capitalists," Ford said, noting that all major California-based technology firms have Detroit offices because the auto industry is a big customer for them.
"But they shouldn't just have sales offices here. Why can't we be the incubators of ideas here? We need to be the intellectual locus of the technology that's going to transform our industry," Ford said. More at Detroit Free Press