Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will: How Jack Welch Created $400 Billion of Value By Transforming GE

The CEO invited candidates to informal tête-à-tête dinners, asking them for not only their visions but their feelings about other GE executives.

Every business participated in the initiative Welch dubbed “destroyyourbusiness.com,” finding opportunities to bring their business processes on-line before high-tech competitors could discover and exploit their vulnerabilities. (The program was later renamed “growyourbusiness.com.”) During 2001,

by Plastics, Power Systems, and NBC, the company began launching websites.

But once he understood the opportunity, GE jumped in.

described as the biggest business event of the last 100 years.

which Welch has de‍

GE was late to recognize the importance of electronic commerce,

GE is training perhaps 30,000 of its most promising executives as Six Sigma “black belts”; through them, Six Sigma is thus becoming yet another instrument of cultural change.

Six Sigma has generated returns of $7.1 billion.

Six Sigma initiative is a rigorous, data-intensive effort to bring the output of business processes up to that standard of near perfection. GE has invested $2.1 billion in this project over five years.