Gee makes remarks at
the opening of WVU’s
Center for the Future of
Land-Grant Education
in September.
Photography by
Jennifer Shephard.
and identify not only additional obstacles
but also new areas of opportunity.
“We hired McKinsey, the largest, most
important consulting group in the world, to
come in and really delve deeply into all the
data and statistics and issues of low- and
high-hanging fruit and discover where we
can immediately start impacting the op-
portunities in this state,” says Gee. “What
they have done is identify areas of immense
opportunity for us and areas in which we
have to respond. The opportunities are tre-
mendous in terms of the things we are not
doing or things we need to emphasize.”
This past spring, McKinsey representa-
tives spent several months in the Mountain
State, consulting local and regional leaders
who are committed to addressing the state’s
economic issues, and the results are promis-
ing. McKinsey & Co. has determined that
the state’s industries primed for growth are
aerospace maintenance, automotive parts,
manufacturing, metal manufacturing and the
state’s rebounding coal industry, and new
sectors that promise high growth for the
state are cyber security, cloud services and
data centers. Opportunity also lies in high-
er-end tourism and a second home market.
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