GE's Back to the Future

In my book: The Secret to GE's Success, I describe how Jeff Immelt and his team have reverted back to some of GE's successful past strategies. GE's investing in and operating generation plants was one of the early Edison strategies (pages 5-6). The Edison GE company, the predecessor of the current company, built and operated power plants. Later when it merged with Thomson Houston to form the current company, it invested heavily in Utilities to enable these emerging companies to gain a competitive position. When the company became over extended and almost went into bankruptcy, it helped create the Electric Bond and Share company (EBASCO) to provide financing and still maintain a control over its customers.

Now that the electrical generation and distribution business is unregulated it makes sense to invest in these highly profitable and growing companies. Being the owner and operator of generation plants makes strategic sense and clearly is a major opportunity for GE globally.

One of the best ways to create new ideas and ventures is to search the past and see if what worked or didn't work in the past might work in the present and future, especially when the market, customers, competitors and regulations have changed.

Learn from the successes and failures of GE...by purchasing and reading my book...The Secret to GE's Success, which is now in Spanish and Japanese and will shortly be available in Chinese, Korean and Indonesian. It is also summarized on a CD...visit my site: http://www.strategyleader.com/ to learn more.