GE: Constant Focus on Innovation, Open Innovation Models

Constantly Focus on Innovation

Shun the incremental and go for the leap

Search for the best ideas

25 Lessons from Jack Welch - Great Business Leader

You have just got to constantly focus on innovation.
And more competitors.

Jack Welch

Now the fundamentals have got to be more education. Faster learning, faster speeds, more technology across the board.

Invest in continuous education and training

Now, when everybody's job is many times faster than it was few years ago, the fundamentals have got to be more education, more training. "Everyone has to be gearing themselves to a faster pace, to more competitiveness, to more intellectual capital. That's the game."

Shun the incremental and go for the leap

Balance fast-growth, higher-risk businesses with dependable and steady ones. The rapid growth of a business may well be unpredictable. The dependable businesses, though, give a company "enormous staying power" and underpin a balanced portfolio. Constantly improve productivity. Successful companies value incremental gains. But make also surprise moves. Disrupt yourself rather than be disrupted. Invest in young innovative firms, especially if a synergetic relationship between the venture and one of more of your businesses is possible.

Search for the best ideas

Create an innovative atmosphere where people are confident that how far and fast they move is constrained only by the limits of their creativity and drive and by their standards of personal excellence.

Establish a "boundaryless" culture in which all employees at all levels of the company participate in innovation and problem solving. "The only ideas that count are the A ideas. There is no second place. That means we have to get everybody in the organization involved. If we do that right, the best ideas will rise to the top."

3Ss of Winning in Business

Stimulate Radical Idea Generation

Techniques for Quick Assessment of Ideas

The only ideas that count are the A ideas.
There is no second place.

Jack Welch

Practice systems thinking and holistic approaches

Seek to improve and optimize the totality of your business rather than the profits of its components. "Everything about this enterprise is doing more with less. It needs rejuvenation all the time. Quality is the next in the learning process. Getting rid of layers. Getting rid of fat. Involving everyone. All that was to get more ideas. The whole thing here is to create a learning organization."

Barriers to Systems Thinking

GE Work Out

You've got to constantly produce more for less through intellectual capital.

Jack Welch

Invest in IT and information management

"The Internet is the Viagra of big business," says Jack Welch. Today information is understood as a competitive necessity, from resolving internal organizational issues to addressing market-based competitive realities.

Grow Your Competitor Intelligence

Spend an hour per week learning what competitors are doing. Spend time on their websites, or studying their ads, catalogues and conference papers.

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Corporate Open Innovation Models

GE implements multiple corporate open innovation models. They are built on its GE Open Innovation Manifesto, which says, “We believe openness leads to inventiveness and usefulness.” To this end, GE crowdsources innovation from experts and entrepreneurs worldwide to solve various internal challenges.

One of GE’s significant initiatives is the First Build. It is a platform that enables the collaboration among designers, engineers, and budding innovators to share new ideas, mainly focusing on creating new home appliances. GE then makes the best ideas available for purchase so that companies develop them further and bring them to life.

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