In Greenville, S.C., G.E. makes giant gas turbines. The turbines can be brought to market in half the usual five years through changes in design and production made possible by digital technology. Credit Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times
It may not qualify as a lightning-bolt eureka moment, but Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, recalls the June day in 2009 that got him thinking. He was speaking with G.E. scientists about new jet engines they were building, laden with sensors to generate a trove of data from every flight — but to what end?
That data could someday be as valuable as the machinery itself, if not more so. But G.E. couldn’t make use of it.
“We had to be more capable in software,” Mr. Immelt said he decided. Maybe G.E. — a maker of power turbines, jet engines, locomotives and medical-imaging equipment — needed to think of its competitors as Amazon and IBM.
