Data in the engine

Becoming the “Microsoft of industry”

“We can’t act like an industrial company anymore. We need to look more like Oracle or Microsoft.” 

That’s what GE CEO Jeff Immelt said in an interview with McKinsey in 2015.

Ten years after its first pivot toward energy efficiency with the Ecomagination program, this ambition materialized with the creation that same year of GE Digital, the division dedicated to software and the industrial Internet of Things. It also launched Predix, a cloud platform designed to collect, analyze, and leverage data from industrial equipment.

Presented as an operating system for the industrial Internet, Predix connects millions of devices, analyzes performance in real time, optimizes operations, and anticipates failures. GE also invested in digital twins, data analytics, and artificial intelligence to harness the massive volumes generated by its machines.

More than just a tech project, this marked the beginning of a new corporate culture. 

A cultural reinvention

The century-old industrial giant, known for its turbines, jet engines, and medical equipment, had to learn to think and act like a digital company. At its California tech center, GE hired scores of developers, data scientists, and design thinking experts. The goal: to build in-house the skills needed for this transformation, and to make software and data analytics as core to the business as materials science or fluid mechanics. The company adopted Silicon Valley methods: agility, test-and-learn, lean startup, etc.

To bring employees on board, GE worked to ease legitimate fears around job loss and explained how these technologies could improve daily work.

The company’s messaging emphasized augmentation: the Internet of Things enhances human capability, it doesn’t replace it. Internal ambassadors translated the tech vision into tangible benefits: “Thanks to sensors, this turbine reduced unplanned downtime by 30 %.” That kind of storytelling was essential to making the transformation feel legitimate and desirable. 

A mixed outcome

Yet, ten years later, the results are mixed. Some projects failed, forcing GE to scale back its initial ambitions. The Predix platform, faced with technical challenges, limited adoption beyond the GE ecosystem and fierce competition from tech giants, was not as successful as expected.

Nonetheless, the company transformed itself culturally. It became more pragmatic, refocusing efforts on targeted solutions - especially asset performance management software. In 2021, GE announced the integration of GE Digital into GE Vernova, a new energy-focused entity.

Though the results of this pivot weren’t fully convincing, GE’s move into software, digital technology, the Internet of Things, and data deeply changed how this symbol of 20th-century industry designs, builds, and maintains its equipment, still making it a cutting-edge company today. 

In the 2010s, GE made a bold attempt to pivot toward digital and the Internet of Things