- START WITH POSITION STATEMENT - Base your decisions on principles and use facts to support your position statement - Explain why you may be wrong and other options Have in mind: What is the case about, what type of case? General Electric's Industrial Internet1 GE has invested in a multibillion-dollar initiative that it calls the industrial Internet. This initiative is revolutionizing the way in which GE creates and captures value. "GE's initiative proposes an open global network of machines, data, and people to generate a plethora of new business opportunities and outcomes-based business models. It focuses on providing data synthesis and analysis and designing realtime and predictive solutions to optimize the complex operations of its customers. Along with sensors and microprocessors, GE already had significant embedded software running a host of equipment across its businesses, including power plants, jet engines, hospitals and medical systems, utility companies, oil rigs, rail, and other industrial infrastructure worldwide. As the scope of the opportunity became apparent, CEO Jeffrey Immelt recognized that the company would have to build new capabilities. "It would need a global center to develop and support software applications uniformly across the businesses and it would need new and innovative approaches to managing customer relationshipsincluding how to sell and service the new offerings."3 GE's wind farm deal with E.ON illustrates how the selling process and the customer relationships change. Rather than selling more turbines to customers, GE used E.ON's massive operational data to run advanced analytics and determine a different solution. The analysis indicated that E.ON could meet the demand for power with a relatively modest purchase of equipment to connect all the turbines through software that provides for dynamic control and real-time analytics. GE creates value by gathering useful data and uses that information to optimize performance, utilization, and maintenance. In turn, GE captures value by receiving a percentage of the customer's incremental revenue from improved performance (i.e., an outcomes-based business model). The sales team is trying to understand if they are using and outcomes-based business model and how they can improve it