I joined GED via one of its many software acquisitions (ServiceMax) made in order to cobble together a coherent Digital strategy. What a disaster! After reading Lights Out: Pride, Delusion and The Fall of GE, I can personally attest that the author's got the story right. Under Immelt's leadership, GE was a train wreck for shareholders. GE Digital was simply another example of how the company over-paid for acquisitions and bungled the post merger integration. I witnessed many of the same storylines the author's lay out in this book. Immelt may have conceived of a brilliant Digital Industrial strategy, but the execution was all wrong.
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Serviceman - bad asset
The strategy was not based in reality - certainly not a real assessment of competition, speed needed to execute, etc
GE businesses have been moving away from Predix for 2 years now. AWS and Azure are all the rage. We still have few apps in Predix and I notice the platform has actually been quite stable and functional for last 12 months now. It seems Predix can handle the reduced load better and provides a glimpse into how Predix could have been an asset for GE if only executives had been patient and not demanded Predix become everything to everyone in too short of a time. Its a pity that GE businesses prefer AWS/Azure instead of their own platform.
Right, GED did not have best mgl talent. Neither did some of the organizations which now comprise GED (Grid, Intelligent Platforms, etc)
GE's screwed up high-pressure culture and its arrogance towards software k–led GE Digital. I would add to it that the managers, executives and staff they mostly recruited were low quality. Junk in , junk out. Many of these old industrial companies (GE, Ford) are finding out the hard way that building great software is hard work.
I don't have to read Lights Out: Pride, Delusion and The Fall of GE. I lived it.
Yes there may have been strategies, but not updating those doesn't work - there is no real strategy now and that means.....
Jack coat tail
Immelt should have been sacked after 2008 financial disaster.
Wow good to see some comments from people that get it. GED, and prior "Smart Automation" business were both poorly conceived with poor mgmt. Only adding fuel to the fire putting grid software into that mix and doubling down on poor mgmt. By time Bryne got there, not sure even Superman could sort out the nonsense
As someone that was there very early on, in the first couple of hundred hires, and far enough up in management to see broadly, I saw many rookie mistakes from the leaders. By that I mean Immelt on down. The primary one was thinking that on day 2, Predix could be all things to every division within GE. It was sold and pushed as such to all the business units that they'd be well served to pile on the Predix bandwagon. This lead to a lot of high pressure products that had to be released under very non-realistic deadlines, all as Predix itself was still more whiteboard than reality. This start the clusterf–k snowball rolling and it never recovered.
The more experienced start up pro would've known to say NO to a majority of the asks, and to pick just one or two early first prototypes to learn from. Only after those were up and running, then start to tease out a more generalized approach as a few more were added. This how a successful startup gets up to speed and evolves their platform. Instead it was all about chasing Jeff's vision of a massive software business in a completely unrealistic time frame.
The other major miss was underestimating all of the fiefdom driven behaviors embedded deep into the management culture of the company. At every level the "what's in it for me mentality" made it incredibly hard to be successful with a platform approach to serve the whole company. So many of the deals were tailored with one off features and only allowed to proceed if each leader could get enough credit for being part of the Digital movement. The company was designed to run as a set of barely connected business lines, and trying to work across all boundaries at once was the definition of uphill battle.
SmartSignal and Meridium are part of our core products now and generating revenue.
@2cln+16uPq0Q8: 100% of acquisitions totaling $1.6B were written off the books for being worthless, or ServiceMax was dumped unceremoniously for 1/3 buy price, but i think they are turned around as a private company outside of GED. Selling what remains of GED for fire sale to Microsoft would be a win for everything. A win for hopeful progress for IoT industry, a win for employees and customers.
Great concept. Terrible execution. There was no cohesive product strategy. Teams across the company built the same things and operated like independent kingdoms. By the time leadership realized execution wasn't happening and there's no revenue from the very few new products that were delivered they started a spending spree to buy market share and capabilities. That's not a bad move – but the execution of those integrations was terrible. How many of the 2016 acquisitions have been re-sold or shutdown? ServiceMax - re-sold. BitStew - shutdown? Wise.io - shutdown? Meridium - still there I think?
Simplistic view of IoT - however that reflects the time the commitment was made. GED simply could not move fast enough to capture the opportunity.
Jeff's Digital Industrial concept was strong, but beyond the first 3 executive powerpoints on it, it was a total Cluster-F. I am looking for a broader community to comment on this...my post was a perspective from a small corner of the overall GED galaxy. What say the rest of the players in the middle of this story???
There was never a coherent strategy. All concept, and no understanding of core competencies and limitations.