{"id":13685,"date":"2016-08-15T07:16:14","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T13:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=13685"},"modified":"2016-08-15T12:03:00","modified_gmt":"2016-08-15T18:03:00","slug":"montana-ethic-project-how-to-foster-high-tech-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2016\/08\/montana-ethic-project-how-to-foster-high-tech-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Montana Ethic Project: How to foster high-tech industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gianforte\"<\/a>

Joey and Libby Early<\/p>

Greg Gianforte talks about how to foster high-tech industry in Montana.<\/p><\/div>\n

This is the 24th chapter of the 32-part video series \u201cThe Montana Ethic Project.\u201d This chapter features Greg Gianforte, who was still with RightNow Technologies when this interview was conducted and who is now, of course, the Republican candidate for governor. He discusses the subject of “High Tech in Montana.”\u00a0You can watch the whole video below. Here is an edited transcript of how it begins:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“I\u2019d like to talk to you about Montana\u2019s economy and how we can create more good-paying jobs here.<\/p>\n

“If you think of Montana\u2019s economy as a combustion engine, it has three cylinders that have traditionally\u00a0provided power. One cylinder is agriculture, another is tourism, and a third is resource extraction of\u00a0lumber and mining. I firmly believe that high technology can be a fourth cylinder on that engine.<\/p>\n

“RightNow Technologies is a software company that I started in Bozeman 13 years ago. We now do over\u00a0$200 million a year in revenue with over a thousand employees around the world. Forty-five percent of\u00a0our employee base is MSU and UM graduates, so we\u2019re keeping kids home and bringing them back from\u00a0out of state. In addition, our average wage in Bozeman is $86,000 a year, making us one of the better\u00a0employers here with wages that are two to three times the average local wage.”<\/p>\n

Here is another, edited excerpt from Gianforte’s\u00a0presentation<\/em>:<\/p>\n

“Montana is one of only eight states in the country not to have any school choice legislation. I would\u00a0encourage the legislators in our audience to consider this and look at some of the other successful\u00a0models that are working in other states.<\/p>\n

“Educational choice should be available to families of all income levels. In a certain sense we already have\u00a0school choice in the state of Montana, if you have money to pay for it. What we need is school choice\u00a0for families of low income. If you want to pursue this further, both the Montana Family Foundation and\u00a0the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice are both very active in educating and working to get\u00a0school choice adopted across our country. We need to act here in Montana, too, so we can produce the\u00a0kids we need for a high tech economy.<\/p>\n

“The internet and high tech are this generation\u2019s gold rush. Just as this state benefited from the last gold\u00a0rush, we have an opportunity in our current generation to increase our economy, to put Main Street\u00a0right next to Wall Street and Silicon Valley.”<\/p>\n