GE Careers Blog.

GE recently released its second annual Global Innovation Barometer, a survey of nearly 3,000 U.S. and foreign business executives on innovation. The report identified innovation as “inextricably linked” with economic growth and as the primary driver behind job creation and the rising quality of life.

Executives at GE are bracing for a new future. The challenge they face is the same one staring down wide swaths of corporate America, not to mention government, schools, and other institutions that have defined how we’ve lived: These organizations have structures and processes built for an industrial age, where efficiency is paramount but adaptability is terribly difficult. We are finely tuned at taking a successful idea or product and replicating it on a large scale. But inside these legacy institutions, changing direction is rough. From classrooms arranged in rows of seats to tenured professors, from the assembly line to the way we promote executives, we have been trained to expect an orderly life. Yet the expectation that these systems provide safety and stability is a trap. This is what Comstock and Peters are battling.

It’s not just C-suites that can benefit from team leadership. Consider this example from General Electric (GE): in 2007, 19 senior managers of GE Power Generation, one of the company’s oldest businesses, convened at GE’s management-development center in Crotonville, N.Y. It was the first time that all of the senior executives of a GE business went through leadership training together. The result? They drafted a vision statement and developed plans for growth, including focusing on regulatory and other staff in emerging markets, which is now a key area in GE’s overall strategy. In just four days, the team efficiently devised, agreed upon, and began implementing a unified strategy.

With the beginning of a new year and it’s a great time to peer into the future. At GE, this does not require tea leaves. Some of the technologies that will help shape the world already exist in the company’s research labs. Take a look at manufacturing. Sometimes, the disruptive innovation is not what is being made but how. For more than a century, people made complex goods such as engine parts, turbine blades, and precise sprocket wheels by machining and taking away material to obtain the finished product. However, a new approach called additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, eliminates most of that laborious process.

GE Transportation was a great growth story last year. The unit, which manufactures high-tech locomotives, mining equipment and other heavy machinery announced more than 2,400 jobs in the U.S. in 2011. It will invest over $400 million to open new plants and upgrade facilities in Pennsylvania and Texas. It also reported $2.1 billion in revenues for the first half of 2011, up 45% over the same period a year ago, and profits at $335 million, up 135%.