General electric company overview and operations

General Electric's Ecomagination Initiative

In May, 2005 Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric (GE), launched the eco-imagination global initiative that sought to invent new products and services that preserved and in some cases strengthened natural resources while increasing profitability (Guerrera, 2007). The initiative has since generated over 80,000 new jobs in GE and its suppliers fueled by a $1.2B investment annual in Research & Development (R&D) by the company through 2011 (Mitra, 2010). The core technologies that GE is concentrating on in this initiative include wind and solar, energy production and conversation, transportation and logistics technologies including electric trains and RFID (Railway Age, 2010) and water purification (Mitra, 2010).

Analysis of the Ecoimagination Initiative

Initially started as a means for GE to attain its own internal sustainability and carbon footprint objectives, Ecoimagination has since become a catalyst of global R&D investment and product leadership internally (Guerrera, 2007). What GE discovered is that the innovations it was making internally to reduce their carbon footprint including CHG emissions, particulate waste, carbon dioxide emissions

(Mitra, 2010). What originally began as a series of initiative for GE to stay in compliance to U.S. And international regulations and environmental standards was transformed via the ecoimaginaition initiative into a multibillion dollar business

(Guerrera, 2007). The net result has been a highly profitable business with strong Return on Investment (ROI) as GE realized a profitable gain by helping companies just like themselves overcome these environmental regulations and requirements. GE literally took an internal program meant to control costs and turned it into a profitable business by paying attention to the unmet needs and pain points of their suppliers, competitors and companies like them in other industries (Guerrera, 2007).

GE also realized that as they expanded into entirely new businesses that were inherently not sustainable from an environmental standpoint. For example, their many acquisitions into the medical devices and equipment market would force them to use non-recyclable materials in new products. This would entail paying European fines for not having sustainable components in their products. Instead of just moving ahead with production and paying the charges to local and federated European Union environmental authorities, GE completely redesigned the value chain and production processes of medical products (Mitra, 2010). This became the catalyst of sustainable business development and was a key factor in the 2004 timeframe when Jeffrey Immelt began the planning of the ecoimaginaition branding initiative. This is just one of many examples corporate-wide where GE was able to capitalize on initially what appeared to be a weaknesses from a sustainability standpoint and turn it into a strength.