In marked contrast to his more famous predecessor Jack Welch, about three years ago, Jeff Immelt set about to transform GE from a huge conglomerate into a huge conglomerate that did well by doing good. Here are the four “primary pledges” of his ecomagination plan that at the time seemed like pipe dreams:
- In R&D, the company has pledged to more than double the $700 million it spent researching cleaner technologies in 2005, to $1.5 billion by 2010.
- GE also seeks to generate at least $20 billion of revenue in 2010 from products and services that “provide significant and measurable environmental performance advantages to customers.”
- The third “ecomagination” commitment calls on GE to improve its operations’ energy efficiency 30% from 2004 levels by 2012.
- Finally, GE is planning to keep the public fully informed of these efforts through various means, including its website and advertising.
Three years later, GE is on track to deliver on all of its pledges, generating a reported $15 billion in revenue from “green” products in 2007 and decreasing internal energy consumption ahead of goal. This is a text book case of thinking big and executing bigger. The ecomagination program has way too many legs to cover here so let me just call your attention to two experiential components.
The first is an online game called GeoTerra that GE launched about two years ago that continues to draw a robust audience. Here’s what Future-Making Serious Gamer had to say about it:
Geoterra is an interactive GE-branded experience that presents game-like attractions that allow players to enhance the well being of an island’s inhabitants and environment through the diversity of GE’s ecomagination products and their ability to create a greener planet.
The challenge of the game revolves around the player’s ability to interact with three eco-challenges and not only score as high as possible, but recognize the best use for each of the GE products and effectively utilize them on the fictitious island. Optimal performance results in a higher Geoscore.
The second is the “imagination center” that is being built right now in Beijing for the Olympic Games. According to the New York Times report today, this two-story building in the middle of the Olympic Green is “half fun house, half museum.”
The exhibits are aimed at adults, with enough just-for-fun features so that a visiting executive need not feel guilty about dragging along the whole family. In the center’s wind energy room, children — or any adult whose inner child is clamoring for attention — can wave their arms to make digital projections of objects sway in the wind they create. In the water purification room, they will walk on a video projection of water, with each step creating ripples.
Meanwhile, GE is building windmills around the world faster than you can say Don Quixote. Here’s to dreaming big.