Digital Disciplines: Attaining Market Leadership via the Cloud, Big Data, Social, Mobile, and the Internet of Things

Chapter 17General Electric—Flying High

Over the preceding chapters, we've looked in depth at each of the four digital disciplines, as well as reviewed an exemplar for each. General Electric, it can be argued, has been successful not just in a single discipline, but in all four.

General Electric is one of the world's largest and longest-lived companies; a paragon of industry. It recently ranked fourth on the Forbes Global 2000, based on annual revenues of close to $150 billion, with over 300,000 employees, including 45,000 engineers, and an average R&D investment of over $4 billion per year. GE has also received accolades such as Fortune's World's Most Admired Companies, MIT Technology Review's 50 Smartest Companies, and Barron's Most Respected Companies.

While the average consumer might think of microwave ovens or light bulbs when they think of GE, it's a diversified conglomerate offering nuclear reactors, wind turbines, manufacturing automation systems, medical imaging systems, locomotives, jet engines, mining equipment, and commercial and personal financial services, such as leases and credit cards, although in April, 2015, it announced plans to divest most of these financial services and assets.

Founded in 1892, largely from several of Thomas Alva Edison's lighting and electrical equipment companies, GE was an inaugural member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1896, and is considered to be the only one remaining of that initial group. It is evident that such longevity ...