GE Canada president tells WCC we must adapt

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This article was published 24/11/2017 (3039 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s not hard to understand why Elyse Allan is such an effective advocate for innovation.

The president of GE Canada is not a technology expert by training. She has a casual, friendly speaking style but delivered a pretty powerful message about the imperative for business to embrace technology or risk becoming obsolete.

She didn’t share a lot of specific tricks of the trade in a speech to more than 400 people at a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce event on Friday but she also did not pull any punches.

“You have to decide if you are going to be a disrupter or be disrupted,” she said without candy-coating the fate of the disrupted.

In speaking about additive manufacturing she mentioned how a sub-assembly for a GE product was put together that at one time required more than 800 different parts but with new design capabilities, 3-D printing and other innovations can now be put together with just 12 different parts.

“There is a lot of disruption among the former suppliers,” she said. “The change is profound.”

It wasn’t fear mongering but it was unequivocal — companies must adapt.

She made the point that the disruption and change that the digital era is causing is not something that is going to stop in a couple of years. It’s the way things are going to be from now on.

As an example she compared a printed circuit board company GE had acquired a few years ago in Alberta where the work was done by hand to GE Transportation’s acquisition last December of Oakbank’s Iders Inc., an electronic product design and manufacturing company founded by Winnipeggers Dave Fletcher and Brad Brown that is fully automated.

The Alberta operation is gone. Allan gushed about automation and efficiencies at Iders.

“It is just so cool,” she said emphatically.

The well-attended event in Winnipeg — everyone still wants to get with GE — came at an auspicious time for General Electric.

The company just announced it was cutting its dividend by 50 per cent, its stock price has lost about 40 per cent of its value since the beginning of the year and the company is now likely going to sell off its iconic light bulb business and probably the transportation business as well.

“To climb to the top of the mountain you have to go through a few valleys,” she said. “GE has been on the top of a lot of mountains and over our 126-year history we have been though some valleys. We will get through it.”

She spoke a lot about sharing the risk and investing in the supply chain and being part of the creation of new businesses and encouraging innovation among its supply chain. She said lots of innovation takes place on the fringe.

“We recognize you can’t have sacred cows,” she said. “The markets are dynamic. Competition is real and its changing and it’s always tougher and faster. You can never get comfortable.”

Needless to say, if that is the attitude of a $126 billion US per year company like GE, it ought to strike fear into the hearts of any company.

Allan was also uncompromising in her assessment of Canadian industry’s track record in investing in information and communications technology.

“We are horrible at it,” she said. “We are the worst.”

But it’s a testimony to Allan’s power of persuasion because as tough as her message was, it was delivered in a gentle, encouraging manner and when it was over she received a rare standing ovation from the Chamber of Commerce crowd.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca