Last week Krish, Sri and myself got a link to an article which screamed “Why GE didn't make it big” in Inc magazine. We felt it was being insensitive towards a player who had the guts to re-imagine the industrial future when no one could conceive it. ( Agreed execution / economics are important too and in the next iteration it would evolve :)
So we wanted to frame the discussion differently — more positively and highlight what GE has done right instead of focusing on the negative ( understandably so since negative news garner more eye balls for monetization in the publication industry :)
So here are 3 bold things which GE Digital did right
1. GE Digital unchained the industrial world from the shackles of its electro-mechanical past
Digital twins, Remote diagnostics, Data driven prognostic models detecting early warning signals ( before physics driven models). These were gaming changing ways of running operations . This catalyzed the industrial mindsets to think different and be liberated from the chains of traditional mental models which celebrated
- Asset ownership over asset access
- Physics over Statistics
- Capex over Opex.
Thanks to GE a host of other industrial companies have woken up to the digital possibilities — Hitachi with Vantara, Siemens with it Mindsphere and Honeywell with Uniformance. Always a visionary peer taking a leap of faith propels others into action.
2. GE Digital and the power of 1 %A
By framing how a 1 % improvement in operational inefficiencies can unlock millions of dollars, they were able to find new levers for cost optimization which were inconceivable before
3. GE Digital tweaked not just AI, but next generation business models
GE did not just innovate on technology but also innovated on business models to deliver their digital services — Asset as a service ( in opex mode) and Pay per outcome were truly game changers.
Closing thoughts …
Pathfinders in uncharted waters are bound to make mistakes and discover things you never envisioned when you started the voyage. It happened to Columbus as he set out in uncharted waters to find India and discovered America in the process :). What if Edison had heeded to journalistic/public pressures at the 500th iteration of light bulb it would hampered the invention of the electric bulb. ( Incidentally Edison said, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.” :)
So To all the folks at GE Digital — Go where no man has gone before and keep iterating/reinventing. As Michaelangelo said
“In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect. I have only to chip away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”
GE Digital is truly the Michelangelo for the Industrial World !
Others will see what GE Digital saw in time :)
The show must go on !!!
Small Side Note :
Flutura has also been playing in the same marketplace with our platform Cerebra and have an intimate understanding of whats happening. We compete with GE Predix platform but have also been “brothers” as we both aspire to make industrial companies experience massively transformative outcomes using AI. The “Industrial AI pie” is so large and its not a zero sum game :)
