I have to confess that when I think about GE, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t radical innovation. But, as usual, I might be wrong. As GE’s Chief Marketing Officer, Beth Comstock, told me when we met at The Economist‘s stimulating Innovation event last week, GE is actually totally committed to creating radically new structures of organization. As what Comstock calls the “world’s oldest start-up,” the 130 year-old company has the scale, she says, to be both nimble and agile. Indeed, she even boasts of GE doing away with traditional organizational hierarchy in some of its many manufacturing businesses so that it can generate more innovation.
But why should TechCrunch readers care about GE? According to Comstock, partnership is a “big theme” and GE is not only committed to working with high-tech startups in everything from healthcare to education, but also into embracing the Internet. Paradoxically, then, it may be America’s oldest companies like GE which are most suited to pivoting and pirouetting amidst the creative destruction of our innovation economy.
The General Electric Company, or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in the State of New York. In 2009, Forbes ranked GE as the world’s largest company. The company has 304,000 employees around the world. GE is a diversified infrastructure, finance and media company taking on the world’s toughest challenges. From aircraft engines and power generation to financial services, medical imaging, and television programming, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs about 300,000 people worldwide. GE has...
Beth Comstock is Chief Marketing Officer and SVP of GE. She leads the company’s organic growth and commercial innovation initiatives, and the sales, marketing and communications functions. She is responsible for the GE-wide business platforms ecomagination, devoted to reducing environmental impact with new technology, and healthymagination, focused on achieving sustainable health through innovation by lowering costs, improving quality and reaching more people. She returned to the CMO role after having spent over two years as President of Integrated Media at...
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