We’ve Learned These Four Lessons from Startups, And We’re Using Them to Transform GE

As my colleagues at GE like to say, there’s no such thing as a 130-year business plan. That’s why we’re constantly tinkering with our business models to get leaner and more agile and to get closer to our customers – to act small even though we’re big. In fact, we think of ourselves as the biggest implementation of Lean Startup principles on earth, a topic we are discussing with entrepreneurial guru Eric Ries this week in San Francisco. Here are four key lessons we’ve learned in the past year of reinventing, simplifying and harnessing our entrepreneurial spirits.

Simplicity is Key

Most of my favorite startups are animated by a radically simple idea. Take Warby Parker, the upstart eyeglass maker. They went into a competitive industry with a mission to make elegant glasses more cheaply. They were clear about what they wanted to do. From the outside, GE seems a bit more complicated. We make jet engines, wind turbines, microscopic electric switches and everything in between. But at our core, we are an advanced technology company. That laser focus on technology is what allows us to pursue 3D printing, process reams of data from power plants and build jet engines, all with a unified sense of what GE is.

We Have to Work Fast

Startups are famous for moving fast, without unnecessary processes. In a corporate environment, famed for its Six Sigma processes, it can be tough to replicate that. That’s why we’ve harnessed the Lean Start Up ethos to develop “FastWorks,” a set of tools, principles and behaviors that management can use to emphasize speed of action. We have to work at the speed of our customers. And test our way forward, getting customer input along the way.

We Don’t Have All the Answers, But You Might

If you don’t have what you need to solve a problem, ask for help. Entrepreneurs understand this implicitly, because they really do lack resources. But big companies have limited resources too. That’s why we're forming more partnerships to round out capabilities, and turning to the community for answers in new arenas. GE recently invested in Quirky, a New York-based startup that gives inventors a platform and helps bring great products to market. We want to tap the power of the community because, as smart as our geniuses are, there are great ideas outside our walls, not just inside them.

Uncertainty is Okay

You have to admire the confidence and speed of startups. They trust that their products will work and that they’ll find a way to monetize them. Navigating uncertainty is what defines entrepreneurship. At GE, we’ve made it a point to protect some ideas from the pressures of developed operations. We have a class of internal start ups that need to be nurtured, like GE's Durathon battery, a green backup power source for cell phone towers in Africa that started life as a hybrid locomotive battery.

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