GE's Chief Innovation Officer Is Ready to Try Something New

BARCELONA—General Electric hasn't had the all-time year. The veteran multinational corporation's stock prices plummeted into a "falling knife" and recent fiscal hits accept re-ignited talks of a breakup. Longtime CEO Jeffrey Immelt stepped down last year and was succeeded past John Flannery, who is tasked with righting the ship.

Flannery has cutting jobs and costs as function of a broad turnaround effort, simply one of his starting time major staffing moves was to promote Sue Siegel to the role of GE'southward first-always Chief Innovation Officer.

Siegel has spent the past four years as CEO of the company's venture capital letter arm, GE Ventures. She helped launch GE Ventures in 2022 and has spearheaded investments in more than than 100 companies across advanced manufacturing, energy, healthcare, artificial intelligence and analytics, robotics and the Internet of Things, and beyond.

She also has more than xxx years of venture majuscule experience in Silicon Valley. Siegel spent fourth dimension in the pharmaceutical manufacture and used her biomedicine and digital health groundwork to help launch GE'southward Healthymagination program. She also sits on more than a dozen boards, including the National Venture Capital Association and the Rand Corporation.

Leading innovation across GE is an imposing mandate. She must accelerate and develop GE's long-term innovation strategy across a vast asset portfolio while leading GE Ventures. GE'due south business units bridge everything from aviation and manufacturing to ability, renewable free energy, transportation, and digital services.

How does Siegel plan to manage all of this? PCMag defenseless up with her at Mobile Globe Congress, where Siegel is part of a keynote panel on automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Siegel was candid about the challenges and opportunities of innovating within GE. She talked well-nigh preparing for our automatic futurity, bringing her VC experience to the office of Chief Innovation Officer, and why she believes Silicon Valley is finally turning a corner on gender equality and diversity.

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PCMag: Permit'south start with why you're here at Mobile World Congress. You lot're part of a keynote panel on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and how automation and smart services are changing the world. Get-go off, how exactly would you define the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

Sue Siegel (SS): The Quaternary Industrial Revolution is all about the convergence of technology. It ranges from AI to blockchain to augmented reality, cloud, and mobile; all of it connected. I think that for the world, and certainly for the likes of an industrial company like GE, it's about taking various combinations of applied science and applying them to true solutions where there are problems to be solved. Either to create new value, unlock productivity, or really bulldoze new jobs and opportunities that haven't been at that place before. At present is the adventure for us to be able to take these opportunities and employ them to create the industrial company of the future.

PCMag: GE's businesses impact on digital automation across then many unlike areas. Where are you seeing automation accept the well-nigh pronounced effect correct now, and what areas do you think we'll run into the nigh profound impact and disruption from automation in the long run?

SS: The globe of additive [manufacturing] is a big example. And it'south ane where GE has embraced this for many, many years. A lot of folks don't know this, only some of the start work in additive manufacturing was washed at GE in the '60s. There are papers written by GE Labs researchers way back when effectually condiment applied science.

So when nosotros think virtually what's next, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it's a combination of not just all of the technology opportunities we've got, simply learning how to combine them through business concern models. It's also about knowing the balance of mixing within and outside talent in ways that potentially weren't washed before, which is the GE equity investing squad. We've been able to invest in about a hundred startups across a range of different types of technology. One surface area that we invest in heavily is this world of automation and improving what we call brilliant factories; smart, connected, and automatic factories.

For example, we've invested in a company called Rethink Robotics out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, that'due south all nigh collaborative robots or "cobots." For a long fourth dimension, robotics is something you had to cage because of the potential human danger from their sheer force or lack of sensor technology. Cobots are not but sensor-based, but able to sit alongside a man right on the product line. You lot tin can intersperse them as you demand and train it without having to code to exist able to perform a sure procedure or system task.

That's one example. Some other is augmented reality applications that really augment the worker, which we've done particularly in our GE Aviation unit and a number of other plants.

A third mode is through a squad called New Business Creation. You can consider it like an incubator, forming companies from scratch, combining technologies from our global research centers with software and analytics expertise. We hire from within GE and from outside, to create a new company as an independent entity and scale it.

To your question of automation, nosotros've done that with Avitas Systems, which applies a combination of technologies to industrial problems. Avitas uses drone technology combined with image conquering combined with cloud and remote analytics applying AI to that paradigm data. We've been doing this offset and foremost effectually our oil and gaskets, flare stacks, pipelines, and all sorts of degrading assets that allow yous now to do a tremendous corporeality of inspections. One major customer of ours has taken the procedure of inspecting oil stacks in a plant from 40 days to 5 days.

PCMag: Let'southward move on to your part as GE's Master Innovation Officer. You start in the task terminal October, at a fourth dimension in the company's history where innovation is maybe more of import than ever for a veteran multinational corporation dealing with consistently falling stock prices and rekindled breakup rumors. Developing and accelerating GE'southward long-term innovation strategy seems a daunting job. How practice you tackle that kind of a mandate?

SS:[laughing] Oh Rob, it's also early in the morning. Just it'south an excellent question, and one that I take to say is still in germination in terms of being able to concretely answer information technology in a couple of sentences.

I will say that [GE CEO] John Flannery actually recognized that we are in a different time in this earth. Everybody recognizes this incredible disruption happening with applied science and entrepreneurs. Information technology needs to be a part of the solution, of which GE is [part of] and not separate. That'due south number one. Two, John understood and I fundamentally believe that innovation isn't something that happens in any one department in a visitor. Innovation is a discipline and should exist deep in everything you lot do, from processes, to thinking, to people ,to the way you lot go about patenting, etc.

Function of my part is to help shape that. GE has never had a Principal Innovation Officer's role per se in the past. So even within GE, people are trying to understand what does this fully mean? My conventionalities is information technology ways existence able to work across GE in the various industries nosotros're working in and really understand the means innovation is happening across the company. Pick them out. It could be in HR. Information technology could exist in legal. It could be in the new means we're applying business organization models around engineering, monetizing the products we already take on our shelves in a new mode. It can be invention coming out of our global research lab. Across the board, I recollect in that location are opportunities to show this is the civilisation of GE. This is in our Deoxyribonucleic acid. It's how we operate.

PCMag: You've also spent the concluding several years as the CEO of GE Ventures in Silicon Valley, investing in startups beyond healthcare, energy, software and analytics, advanced manufacturing, and beyond. It'southward still targeted investment, but of a different kind. Do you run into GE Ventures as an extension or a blueprint for the kind of work y'all're now doing every bit Primary Innovation Officeholder? How do you think that role prepared you for this one?

SS: The other office of my job is what've washed in GE Ventures, investing in about 100 companies now over the last iv years. We created new companies and our new Business Cosmos Group, but the other group we managed is a licensing group, where we started to do something new, and the licensing globe started to accept notice.

GE has 58,000 patents. We took our [intellectual property] and instead of just doing the archetype licensing model with royalties attached, we thought: "Concord on a second. This is a strategic asset." Just like an entrepreneur who takes an thought and starts a visitor, our licensing team worked with our ventures and business creation teams to substantially do but that. We've formed, I believe, nine companies already through this methodology. At that place are a number of unlike ways to employ what is a treasure trove of IP sitting on our shelves. Now we're starting companies to say "allow'south take this jewel and do something more with it," and it's turned into some creative monetization models. When John saw what we were doing in licensing, he told us to scale it much bigger, and in a mode where the culture and processes are imbued within GE itself.

We desire to partner with the entrepreneurial ecosystem fifty-fifty more. And last just not the least, we want the ability to see the futurity a bit more than and understand the processes that entrepreneurs use inside GE.

PCMag: I want to enquire you about healthcare tech in particular, given your deep expertise in the field. You've aid launch and invest in a number of cutting-border digital health and biomedical companies and sit on the boards of more than half a dozen corporations and organizations in the space.

What are some of the digital wellness trends and biomedical technologies you're watching closely right now? What has the potential to really improve homo lives?

SS: The appearance of sensor-based technologies and wearables connecting the individual to the cloud. Nosotros e'er thought of healthcare as patient driven, but at present it's becoming consumer-driven. For the first fourth dimension, health in an individual through sensor and performance-based data is available anyplace, anywhere, someday.

I think you're also going to encounter much more advancements equally it relates to prediction of healthcare. We're doing a lot of work in AI and images, and then that you tin actually predict what you're seeing from all of the images that we've already collected. Forr case, to augment what the radiologist sees.

There'south too the notion of utilizing VR applied science for grooming; preparation for surgeons earlier they actually comport surgery. They're doing this at Stanford, the actual motion-picture show of a heart that you tin can see in 3D and look at it in many different dimensions to get practice before you ever conduct open up centre surgery. The notion of VR for education is being used in training across medical schools now, and you lot're seeing that more and more.

PCMag: I think it's telling that y'all're staying on as GE Ventures CEO in tandem with your CIO role. GE Ventures can sometimes serve as a way for GE to double-down on its investments or to turn a supplier or partner into an asset. Companies like Upskill come to heed. Is that an avenue yous plan on utilizing going forward? Bringing in outside innovation through startups and VC investment to revitalize areas of the corporation? How do you lot see your dual roles synergizing toward shared goals?

SS: Ten years from now, you and I will both know a amend answer, the right answer. But I can requite yous what I call up is an evolving respond. In the by, if nosotros invested in a visitor, we would find ways to large joint ventures or find a way to absorb information technology as part of a much more formalized process. Now, part of what'south expected is that these portfolio companies of ours not simply testify u.s.a. a bit of the future from which nosotros can learn, only also provide a way to partner. Nosotros don't take to ain it all. Where nosotros can exist office of the future? Or where can it can help us either unleash productivity internally through products and services, or help distribute their solutions worldwide?

I think what you were partially teasing at is that information technology gives us an extension of innovation that is across ourselves. When you ask about laying out a pattern, and I want to dissect that a little flake.

My sense is the footstep of change is only increasing. It will never exist equally slow in the futurity every bit it is today. When we think about where everything is headed, there's lot of inherent learning from being part of a infinite. For instance, in the gas or energy business organisation, or our healthcare business, or aviation, yous simply acquire it because your customers are telling you their problems. But with the stride of technological alter being what it is, our design going forward is to access that entrepreneurial ecosystem. Yous must. The companies that learn how to practise it all-time, how to partner best, are going to be the ones that adapt best for the future. I think that'due south the journey that GE's been on.

PCMag: Over these kickoff several months in the chore, what areas of the company have you been focusing on, or identifying particularly fertile ground for innovation? Or has it been more about changing the culture?

SS: What I've been trying to do is actually sympathize the state of innovation across GE, first and foremost. What I'grand also existence asked to do is to take what we've done over the terminal v years from GE Ventures and scale that into more of the organisation, even more broadly than we've started to practise. Because in the scheme of everything at GE, v years is a small amount of fourth dimension. Nosotros've invested in 100 startups, we take nearly 50 percentage of those startups have relationships with some function of our businesses.

Nosotros're looking beyond the board, where are innovations that can happen? Be information technology in human resources, in global operations, in supply chain. How exercise nosotros have those and make sure there's best practice across our core areas? That'southward something I've been working as well, to actually calibration those kind of innovations across the board.

Something I think nosotros've brought to the equation even more than so is this VC mindset. Venture capital brings experimentation, taking risks, and the ability to really be externally focused and bring in those kind of disruptions. It'due south about being willing to take risks in means that weren't allowed before. Think almost VC practices ike milestone-based funding, where y'all don't get funds released until you lot hit the milestone. Corporations are used to the annual upkeep. That's a very different mentality than what corporations are used to. When you commencement to meld these practices together, that'due south a cultural element we're being asked to bring to the table. Not to mention this culture of debate, of actually proficient debate that fosters all sort of creative thinking and brainstorming in a very holistic way.

PCMag: Yous've also been named one of "The 100 Virtually Influential Women in Silicon Valley" past Silicon Valley Business concern Journal. Given your decades of feel living and working in Silicon Valley, I want to inquire you about some of the uncomfortable realities the tech and VC world have begun to face up around civilisation, gender discrimination, and diversity bug in the valley.

As a successful female executive, where do you recall the tech world is right now in terms of gender inequality? Tin can you draw the kind of workplace cultures you've experienced through the course of your career, and whether you lot've observed any kind of a shift over fourth dimension? How far exercise we have to go?

SS: Thanks for the very thoughtful question. Offset of all, if y'all saw me, I embrace three minorities. I'grand a adult female, I'one thousand Asian/Hispanic, and I'm short. I mean short. I'm 4'11", okay? Information technology's just a reality. I grew up understanding diversity, merely I would say I was very careful to never use my multifariousness as an advantage. On the contrary. I would ever make sure it never ever came up. That information technology would never arrive the way of meritocracy, of hard work, of really making sure you earned your style.

As I've gotten older, equally I've gotten more feel, every bit I've risen within the corporate ladder, I've come to realize something. A lot of fourth dimension women presume there is such an understanding of the bug we accept faced over the years. There is no dubiety that we confront unfairness. Just if nosotros're going to advance the cause, my urging to women is we must exist willing to help brainwash and share these topics, which we know and then intimately well, with men who desire to advance the cause, too. Senior men and women, just most importantly men who did non speak up in the by, have get much more aware of the need to have this conversation.

PCMag: Have yous observed whatever kind of a shift in how Silicon Valley is addressing and against these bug? How far do we have to get?

SS: The tech world today, particularly in Silicon Valley, has had a huge, huge, wake-up call from Susan Fowler at Uber and the memo she wrote and then eloquently. This has rippled all the mode through to various VC funds letting go their atomic number 82 and key partners. That is very much ground-shaking. The National Venture Capital Clan board, which I was a part of, created a multifariousness job force calling for all-time practices within VC land to really understand and put forward a better way to bear. And then I call back there'southward not only been a wake-up call, but those in the past that weren't speaking up are speaking up at present. Like Reid Hoffman as an example. Those influential men's voices are in the conversation now, too. It's no longer the women speaking upward and pleading for everyone else to listen.

The conversation is changed. The whole concept of unconscious bias, and all of the unlike things that I think people are much more than educated almost. Information technology's created both a base of data from which to operate, just also 1 that allows for both men and women to be present in the conversation. And that's made a difference. The VC world has begun to take information technology more seriously. You see venerable firms like Sequoia, for case, taking in their first female person investor a little over a yr ago. Simply go across the lath and y'all're starting to run across that happen.

The same thing happening in the tech world is happening in the media world, in politics. It'south happening. You're seeing such an outcry. The #MeToo movement became so strong along with the Women'southward March movement. Information technology has raised a level of awareness. People are saying "okay not merely do I run into the kind of contributions that all genders and minorities can brand, only I believe it besides." What before you lot might accept said was happening on the fringe is now very mainstream. This is almost our sisters and our nieces and our friends and daughters. This is not something purely peripheral, it's core to who nosotros are. Particularly with the rise of educated women in the workforce, how tin can you lot ignore information technology?

Now what nosotros have to do is expand that: will our voices truly be as powerful as men's? Now women are getting more than of the field to play on every bit difficult every bit the men play on. In a way, I remember its only going to raise all sorts of levels of productivity, all sorts of levels of appointment that nosotros've not seen before. Information technology's going to exist an unleashing, and frankly can be a powerful source of the 4th Industrial Revolution, to say the least.

I retrieve the divergence too is that people see that there are consequences to their deportment versus in the past maybe at that place was a more muted tone. People might turn an eye because it was bad behavior simply non necessarily one that "had a repercussion." Now there are serious repercussions, and we've seen then many fall. And over again, it is not industry specific. Information technology is across industries. I call up that'southward the power of the message.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/news/19808/ges-chief-innovation-officer-is-ready-to-try-something-new

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