Many large companies yearn to rekindle the innovative magic of entrepreneurship, but very few actually succeed. The reasons have been well documented and include:
How GE Appliances Built an Innovation Lab to Rapidly Prototype Products
It is generally futile for large companies to ask: “How can we act like a fast, lean, risk-taking startup?” They can’t, because they answer to investors who value predictable, consistent financial results, and and therefore intolerant of the risks inherent in bold innovation. Large traditional organizations struggling to adapt to the fast-paced, risk-filled digital age would do well to consider FirstBuild, an experiment at GE Appliances that is showing real promise. FirstBuild is a GE-equipped innovation lab and micro-factory with an open community of industrial designers, scientists, engineers, students, and amateur tinkerers working alongside FirstBuild employees to design, build, and sell innovative home appliances. It’s built for speed, bringing together the capacity not just to invent, but to rapidly prototype, manufacture and commercialize new products. The results so far are promising, with a whole new generation of smart appliances being invented. Other large, traditional product companies would do well to emulate the concept to resolve the dilemma of how to innovate quickly in a large, established company.