Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/58916
IDEA MAN GE 's corporate slogan "Imagination at Work" isn't just an adver- tising strategy. It's the way the company, headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, and its outspoken CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, do business. And yet, even as GE works to build a culture of For managers to impress Jeff Immelt, GE's forward-thinking CEO, they can't play it safe. They must have courage, take risks, and conceive the great ideas that will shape the company's future. by Tricia Bisoux innovation, imagination, and eco-friendly business practices, many analysts wonder whether a company with a successful 120-year track record should so drastically depart from the strategies that have fed its current success—in particular, its pursuit of bottom-line productivity and slow, steady growth. Immelt, for one, believes that great new ideas are essential for the company's continued success. "Our aspiration has never really been to be a big company. What we've really been about is being a great company," Immelt told students at Fairfield University's Charles F. Dolan School of Business lecture series in December 2005. "We don't allow ourselves to become too big to innovate." In fact, in its March 28, 2005, article, "The Immelt Revolution," BusinessWeek called Immelt's new approach a "grand experiment." GE's performance under Immelt's new directives will be a test of whether innovation, creativity, and risk-taking in the market really pay off, in real-world dollars, for a company in today's business environment. Immelt came to GE in 1982 after earning a degree in applied mathematics from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He quickly rose through GE's ranks, working in the company's appliance and plastics divisions before becoming president of its medical systems division. He became chair-elect in 1999, following in the footsteps of one of America's most prominent CEOs, Jack Welch. He took over as GE's CEO on September 9, 2001, two days before the terrorist attacks in the U.S., which killed two employees and sent GE's stock price plunging. Rarely has a new CEO faced such daunting challenges so early in his tenure, with so little time to adapt. However, Immelt has run the obstacle course with relative grace. In fact, in a 2005 survey conducted by New York-based public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, Immelt was ranked among the top ten most admired CEOs in the world. If courage, risk-taking, and innovation are important to business, says Immelt, they are doubly important for business schools. Now more than ever, companies don't want business schools merely to follow the trends. They want business schools to produce the business leaders and develop the best practices that will help them succeed in a slow-growth, high-tech, increasingly unpredictable world. 18 BizEd MAY/JUNE 2006