At one optics company in Rochester, New York, everything stopped when Dennis didn’t show up to work.
He wasn’t the CEO or the lead engineer. Dennis was a technician with a two-year degree. But without him, production lines stalled and shipping deadlines slipped. His absence underscored a simple truth in photonics: The most brilliant designs mean little without skilled technicians to turn them into products.
That story was told in September in Bozeman, Montana, by Alexis Vogt, a University of Rochester–trained Ph.D., who leads the optics technician training program at Monroe Community College. Speaking to more than 150 Montana tech, startup and economic development leaders at a summit hosted by the Headwaters Tech Hub, Vogt said Dennis represented the linchpin of an entire industry.
A simple idea — hire technically strong faculty who also engage with industry, then let their students spin out companies — built a sustainable innovation pipeline.
For every one optics engineer, companies need 10 trained technicians. That shortage is a national bottleneck slowing both innovation and production.
Photonics, the science of light used in technologies like lasers and sensors, is one narrow field that tells a broader story — much like this big, mountain state now staking its claim as a hub of the sector.
Photonics isn’t a single industry so much as a discipline that spans many. There’s no comprehensive count of total US photonics employment, but tens of thousands of specialized roles exist, from technicians to Ph.D. scientists.
One estimate counts more than 170,000 photonics engineers nationwide, with steady growth expected, and another 80,000 jobs are expected this decade that require less advanced training. These jobs show up in research labs, startups and across sectors that use lasers, from manufacturing and mining to telecommunications and transportation.
How Montana found its focus
Montana’s claim to photonics is rooted in academic research and a legacy of spinout startups. When applying for federal Tech Hub funding, local organizers counted about 40 firms with a photonics focus, employing roughly 1,000 people.
Among the most prominent examples is Aurora, the Pittsburgh-founded autonomous freight company whose 2019 acquisition of Bozeman LIDAR startup Blackmore became a foundation for its self-driving systems.
Beyond photonics, Montana’s population is among the fastest growing in the country, with a reputation for being pro-business. Lightcast recently ranked it among the top 10 states for attracting workers, and across a mix of economic indicators, it performs nearly as well as red-hot neighbor Idaho.
Still, much of that success remains tied to extractive industries. The photonics sector — and adjoining tech specialties — represent a bet on a more dynamic future.
That’s the mission of the $41 million federally funded Headwaters Tech Hub, led by Tim VanReken, who organized the Bozeman summit. Attendees ranged from photonics specialists to tribal workforce organizers and leaders from other Tech Hubs across the country.
A Caltech-trained chemical engineer, VanReken spent a decade at the National Science Foundation, and he once advised Sen. Jon Tester. Polite, mild-mannered and steeped in the “ecosystem-building” playbook of modern economic development, he’s now tasked with connecting Montana’s research strengths and frontier spirit to build a more diverse economy.
“Folks roll up their sleeves and solve problems; they make things work,” VanReken said at the Technical.ly Builders Conference this spring. “It’s part of that frontier spirit that’s been here for generations.”
Montana’s photonics story
If Dennis’s tale explains the workforce challenge, Montana’s story shows how one place can turn a scientific specialty into an economic strategy.
Sporting a long, gray ponytail, Joseph Shaw, director of Montana State University’s (MSU) optical technology center, is among photonics’ most tenured advocates. He’s an oral historian of how Bozeman developed one of the country’s highest per-capita concentrations of optics companies.
It started in the 1980s, when a few promising MSU alumni couldn’t find local jobs so instead started companies near campus to share equipment and collaborate with faculty. Four startups and four professors became the seed. Shaw described three waves of growth, a model familiar to other economic clusters developed around breakthrough research:
- Returning for research: Enough faculty, students and alumni focused on similar academic interests attract others to return, often at a research level for some emerging technology or science.
- Startups that stick: Some number of those faculty and graduate students first commercialize the research in early firms, leading to the field’s first meaningful employers.
- Industry entrants: A few local firms develop credible specialties and the academic specialty deepens, so larger national firms acquire local firms or open satellite offices to access specialized workforce, which attracts others.
“Now we have people reaching out from all over the world wanting to know what’s going on in Bozeman,” Shaw said.
The ‘secret sauce’
Shaw pooh-poohs formal tech-transfer and place-based economic development strategy.
“I don’t know any of those theories,” he said. “We just hired good people.”
That simple idea — hire technically strong faculty who also engage with industry, then let their students spin out companies — built a sustainable innovation pipeline. Graduate programs seeded companies. Programs were started to fill gaps, like a technician program for entry-level gaps. The next step, Shaw said, is to launch a bachelor’s degree in photonics engineering.
But success isn’t just infrastructure. It’s culture. Entrepreneurs don’t choose places to start companies; they choose places to live, and then start companies there.
A few hours from Yellowstone National Park, Bozeman has evolved into a high-end frontier town of steakhouses, cocktail bars and startup ambition. Silicon Valley expats have poured in, buying homes and crowding hiking trail parking lots. Montana’s own governor, Greg Gianforte, is a software engineer turned tech entrepreneur, and both US senators have tech backgrounds.
Median home prices now top $775,000, up 20% from last year, according to Redfin. That demand signals desirability, but also strains the region’s young innovation ecosystem. I toured a Bozeman native’s modest, newly bought, lovingly renovated 1,600-square-foot home; it cost this remote startup worker $800,000 to come back, a cost-prohibitive feat for others to follow.
The charming city’s population may be growing fast, but it’s still just 60,000. Nationwide, Walmart employs more people than there are residents of Montana, most of which isn’t like Bozeman or Helena. To produce good science, you need good people. Many can be trained at home, but newcomers are necessary too, preferably close to research facilities, capital sources and training programs.
Vogt’s story about Dennis the technician has two competing messages: Good that workers of all education levels are so necessary to this emerging field, and worrisome to know a place needs to attract them if it is going to thrive. To do so, Montana is facing what any place in economic change does: Maintaining its distinctive spirit while responding to new demands.
After the summit, I joined Tech Hub leaders from around the country on a drive through preserved land, where herds of bison roam. Our guide was a tech entrepreneur who moved to Bozeman in the 1980s. On the ride from his ranch, he told me about his adopted home, passing new housing developments on long roads leading to nearby mountain peaks.
“So much of what people love about this place is what has never changed, the mountains and the land,” he said. “It all can’t stay the same forever.”
