Since the early 20th Century, Detroit has been a destination city for people around the globe looking for a better life. Steadily chuffing automotive lines not only brought thousands to the city to work on the line, but a steady stream of engineers, designers and accountants and, more recently, information technology wizards and software experts.
It's not an unfamiliar story: big industry brings immigrants, who start storefront grocery stores, restaurants, and a slew of small businesses to serve the needs of their community. Only these days, with the automotive industry in reorganization mode, along with the global economy, efforts to bring foreign-born entrepreneurs to the region is an exercise of deliberation.
"It's been a challenge," says Martin Manna, executive director of the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce. "In this economic environment, there's a fear that [immigrants] are going to take jobs."
But, Manna explains, many immigrants bring with them an entrepreneurial spirit that can fuel economic development. And it's just that spirit that business incubators and others are now working to harness.
Importing entrepreneurship
An April 2007 study conducted by a team of Duke University and University of California, Berkeley researchers found that between 1995 and 2005, 52.4 percent of the engineering and technology startups in Silicon Valley had one or more foreign-born key founders.
Another 2007 report to the U.S. Congress found that many of the fastest growing science and high-tech firms working in IT and software had been founded by foreign-born (and more often than not U.S. educated) entrepreneurs.
That's exactly why the heat is on to attract more foreign born residents and startups to Detroit, says Randal Charlton, executive director of TechTown, the high-tech Wayne State University-affiliated business incubator.
TechTown is home to the "Soft Landings" program, which aims to provide high-tech and clean-tech startups and businesses around the globe easy entry to the U.S. market. The idea, Charlton says, is to attract businesses to Detroit and the metro area as a gateway to a solid footing in the United States by providing office space and a host of other services such as translation, language training, market research and entry.
TechTown, in concert with the University of Windsor, also helps fledgling businesses with access to capital and potential funders, figuring out American laws and regulations and intellectual property assistance.
TechTown's program in early July became one of only a dozen business incubators around the world to be designated a Soft Landing International Incubator. Other such designated sites include those in Wales, Australia, Hong Kong, France, Finland, and Boston, Silicon Valley, Baltimore and, oddly, Grand Forks, North Dakota.
What that means, Charlton explains, is that "national organizations are going to recognize and promote us around the world."
Businesses from around the globe are already taking notice, he says. TechBA, a business acceleration program operated by the Mexican Government's Ministry of the Economy, set up shop at TechTown last October. Since then, Charlton observes, about 30 Mexican businesses have started working with TechTown to forge opportunities with U.S. automotive companies, among others.
TechBA has similar incubators located in Silicon Valley, California; Austin, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; Montreal, Quebec; and Madrid, Spain. Since 2005, the program has established 321 companies that have created more than 3,600 jobs.
Detroit is a prime spot for the program to continue its success, Charlton says.
"We've already had successes, partnerships have been established," he adds. "Mexican companies are being brought to Detroit to explore not just the business opportunities on this side of the river, but also in Canada. And that's important. It reinforces our strategic location as being the gateway to the North American Free Trade Agreement market."
Charlton said that TechTown's Soft Landing program has also garnered interest from other overseas companies, including biotechnology and medical device companies from Europe, and a Hungarian firm that developed a new type of wind turbine.
A world of opportunity
With two top research universities, two medical schools and five world-class health systems all located in Southeast Michigan, Detroit is a natural fit for many entrepreneurs looking to take their big invention to the U.S. market.
The trick, Charlton says, is to make it easy for them to choose us."We're just taking a new approach to seducing the world to Detroit."
Immigrants will usually gravitate to places that provide the best mentoring and networking opportunities, says Minesh Baxi, a Troy-based business author and consultant. That often means joining family members or communities with similar backgrounds and values, but also starting businesses in industries with which they are already familiar.
An entrepreneurial minded person who comes to the U.S. to work in IT for a Fortune 500 company will more likely than not get their toes wet with a couple of outside clients before spinning off their own IT business, he says.
Now the effort is to not only attract new foreign-born entrepreneurs, but to retain and leverage the ones we already have, Charlton explains.
And compared to other cities, Southeast Michigan has an impressive share of entrepreneurial know-how and talent already.
According to numbers shown in a report from Bill Testa, vice president and director of regional programs in the economic research department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Detroit has more than a fighting chance. About 16 percent of Metro Detroit's foreign-born are entrepreneurs, a respectable amount compared to the national average of about 18 percent. Only Chicago surpasses that figure, at about 26 percent.
Testa also points out that about 38 percent of the area's foreign-born have at least a bachelor's degree. That's compared to 50 percent in Pittsburgh, about 46 percent in Cincinnati, and 41 percent in Columbus.
Leveraging the knowledge and talent we already have here can lead to big opportunity, says Ahmad Chebbani, president and owner of Dearborn-based Omnex Accounting and chairman of the American Middle East Economic Affairs Committee, a nonprofit group created to facilitate business, trade and investment between the U.S. and the Arab world.
Chebbani, who came to the U.S. in 1979 at the age of 19, sees plenty of opportunity for foreign-born entrepreneurs even in these scarce times. Business people from other countries still have ties and important cultural knowledge of their homelands, Chebbani says, important assets to establishing new export or import ventures.
The bigger vision of Chebbani's group, says the organization's Web site, is to "make Metro Detroit the hub of U.S. trade and commerce with the Middle East."
One example: used cars may have diminished value in the U.S., but are valued overseas, making a profitable venture for an entrepreneurial minded person with the will to put the logistics in place to make it work.
And willpower is something that foreign born entrepreneurs have plenty of, he says, as upon arriving in the U.S., many have grown accustomed to 80 hour work weeks, weekends included. Transferring that nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic to a startup, even in a new homeland, is not so unusual.
Chebbani, who also co-founded the American Arab Chamber of Commerce in 1992 and chairs the group, says his own company is finding new opportunities to expand as well. The accounting business got its start as boutique tax advisors to the small, primarily storefront businesses in Dearborn. But these days, the firm is one of the largest of its kind in the area and is expanding into additional services such as payroll and consulting.
"There is opportunity out there," Chebbani says.
Michelle Martinez is a freelance writer and editor who has reported on Metro Detroit businesses and issues for five years. Her previous article was
Metro Mass Transit - What It NeedsPhotos:
Joe Gappy, owner of Super Mercado - Southwest Detroit
Martin Manna
Randal Charlton
Minesh Baxi
Photographs by Detroit Photographer Marvin Shaouni Marvin Shaouni is the Managing Photographer for Metromode & Model D