Published by Crain’s Detroit in 2016.

The Great Recession struck fear into a lot of business owners and executives.

It struck fear, too, into Matt O’Bryan, the President and CEO of Dearborn-based KLA Laboratories, Inc., a company that does a range of IT and communication services, including installing audio and visual systems, building Wi-Fi networks and providing event production services.

But O’Bryan didn’t see the recession as a time for retrenching, he saw it as an opportunity to reinvent a company that was founded on the eve of the Great Depression in 1929. As a result of the reinvention, revenue, profits and employment have grown sharply.