GE’s Imagination Breakthroughs: The Evo Project

Company Overview * General Electric (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate corporation formed by the merger of Edison General Electric Company and Thomson-Houston Electric Company in 1892. GE has grown over the years through innovation (from R&D) as well as mergers and acquisitions. * On September 2001, Jeff Immelt became GE’s ninth CEO in its 109-year history. The terrorist attack on September 11 - four days after his appointment destroyed the world trade center towers and caused huge turmoil in the economy. As expected stock market dropped drastically and this led to a drop in confidence that spread rapidly around the globe. * During this economy downturn, the environment was generally bad for most companies to do business and GE was not exempted. By the end pf 2002, GE’s revenue had declined by 3% from prior year and its stock prices had plunged drastically as compared to previous years and all-time high. Immelt identified it was not a great year to be a CEO. * Immelt predecessor Jack Welch had an excellent track record; under his leadership GE had generated a total return to shareholders of 23% per annum for 20 years consecutively. With most of this successes attributed to a disciplined, efficient and consistent operations management aswell as acquisitions. Immelt realized Welchs’ brilliant success stories were a difficult one to match and had to come up with a different strategy to grow in this new millennium.
Case Overview * The case covers how the newly appointed CEO – Jeff Immelt tried to make growth a priority even in this difficult time, changing GE’s strategy to focus mainly on organic growth through internal innovation rather than mergers and acquisitions (clever deal making) and efficient operation management which accounted for the majority of GE’s growth prior to