Harvard Business Review Praises ecomagination Challenge

GE Works

In 2010, GE and its venture capital partners started the ecomagination Challenge—an open invitation to innovators all around the world to submit their best ideas for helping solve the difficult challenges of our energy future. This innovative approach has been met with great success.

Challenge winners have ranged from fairly developed cleantech companies to very small startups. To date, GE and its partners have invested $134 million in these innovations, a vital source of funding at a crucial time for small companies.

HBR sees three reasons why GE’s innovative approach could well herald the future of cooperation between large and small companies. First, investment from a large company can help a startup across the “Valley of Death”—the enormous difference between the seed funding required to start a business and the capital-intensive investment required to see infrastructure-scale businesses through to established success. GE and other large companies can help these small companies by accelerating commercialization and providing the scale to implement them quickly, bringing better ideas to market faster.

Second, rethinking our energy infrastructure benefits from entrepreneurial, outside thinking. Opening the doors to a wide range of new ideas helps everyone rethink what is possible and what are the best ways forward.

And third, in creating a community of excited entrepreneurs GE fosters innovation beyond just finding and funding it. Innovators find each other, share ideas, and improve the concepts. A lone innovator or small company might not be able to see their ideas through to completion, but when combined with others found through the Challenge, they can work together to provide a compelling offering.

With the scale of the challenges facing us in our energy future, GE’s innovative approach may yield valuable new tools for bringing ideas to market faster, and meeting our growing energy needs.