University of California, Berkeley-Haas collection. When is Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of General Electric planning a meeting with the CEO, Jeffrey Immelt of GE, as GE ecomagination Challenge case study occurs in 2010. The pair plan to discuss the organization's ecomagination Challenge, an open innovation process that solicited energy ideas from individuals and start-ups to recognize potential enterprises for renewable and green energy areas for GE to invest in. Pursuing this approach required several organizational procedures which were new to GE. For one, they chose to partner with four VC firms that were outside, and pool the due diligence process with them and co-invest with them. For another, they selected to receive entries to the ecomagination Challenge through a publicly accessible web site. Virtually 4,000 submissions were received, and 75,000 people participated in the process.
However, GE's $37 billion energy business dwarfed the scale of these results. And it would take years for all these young enterprises to reach a size that would be of direct business value to the energy company of GE. And of course several of the youthful ventures would likely fail along the way. Should GE measure the results of ecomagination in order to warrant its existence and possible future investments? Structures and what new processes would be asked to make sure that some of the investments of the Challenge would pay off for GE down the road? On the basis of the results of the software to date, was the program a great investment for something and GE should repeat, or was it a noble experiment that should be suspended?
PUBLICATION DATE: August 01, 2012 PRODUCT #: B5672-HCB-ENG
This is just an excerpt. This case is about INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Related Case Solutions & Analyses:
The Rules of Genius: An Innovator’s Guide to Creativity
Growing the Online Portal of Business Fundas
Flatpebble.com: Online Services Marketplace
Music and the (Real) World: Thirty Years of MTV
Old Problems Remain, New Ones Crop up: Political Risk in the 21st century
Seventh Generation: The Marketside Offer
Bridging the Digital Divide: HP’s First i-Community in Kuppam (B)
Germany’s Evolving Privatization Policies: The Plaschna Management KG
Portland’s Urban Growth Boundary and Housing Prices (A): The Debate
Wal-Mart Stores in 2003, Spanish Version
