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Emerging
Oakland County
A HOTBED OF INNOVATION
By Wensdy Von Buskirk
One of Tyrone Secord’s most prominent plan to go into production and hope to be successful
inventions arose from a Navy SEAL’s with it.”
complaints about his tracking device.
The unit was cumbersome, the serviceman
told him, and sometimes got knocked off during
paratrooper missions, leaving SEAL Team Six
members untrackable in the field.
Secord partnered with a friend — the soldier’s
father — to develop a sleeker, more durable unit
made from pliable plastic that tracks servicemen
using GPS and infrared capabilities. It’s just one of
many patents Secord has secured.
A graduate of the University of Michigan and
longtime automotive engineer, Secord founded
Rochester-based Simek in 2004, primarily to bring
his own ideas to life.
Since then, in addition to patenting 20 of his
own inventions, he has
INNOVATION OAKLAND
Whether new ideas, innovations and inventions are
seemingly simple or extremely complex, they are the
backbone of emerging markets like robotics, advance
electronics, aerospace, defense and IT.
These markets have huge potential for growth
— trends Oakland County Executive L. Brooks
Patterson identified when he launched his Emerging
Sectors® initiative in 2004. The plan has continued
to attract and retain companies devoted to these
sectors that are driving the U.S. economy forward.
Oakland County is committed to nurturing
companies in these cutting-edge fields, and it’s
paying off. Economic investment in emerging sectors
has topped $3.2 billion in the
helped clients design,
prototype and patent more
than 100 products for various
EMERGING SECTORS
IN OAKLAND COUNTY
Robotics & Automation
county: that’s 358 successes
providing more than 57,000
jobs among them. An
industries.
average of 3,000 patents
Advanced Electronics
Most recently, he joined
are filed each year from
two partners to form Suture
Advanced Materials
Oakland County alone.
Removal Innovations to
Aerospace
develop a medical device that
WORLD CLASS
Alternative Energy
combines forceps and scissors
One of the county’s many
in one.
“We’ve taken suture
removal from a two instrument,
two-handed procedure
to a one instrument, onehanded
IT/Communication
Defense/Homeland Security
F.I.R.E.
Film & Digital Media
success stories emerged
from Novi, where engineer
Paul Ryznar founded OPS
Solutions in 2005. Ryznar
invented Light Guide
procedure,” he says.
Systems (LGS) to error-proof
Medical Main Street
“If there are no snags, we
and streamline complex
50 OAKLANDCOUNTYPROSPER.COM 2016