Fairfield County Business Journal Back to basics: GE recommits to U.S. research
Back to basics: GE recommits to U.S. research
In what may mark a manifesto for his managerial legacy, General Electric Co. CEO Jeff Immelt exhorted his U.S. peers to reinvest in high-tech research within the country’s borders and committed GE to doing the same at the expense of easy profits from finance and other services.
Fairfield-based GE is adding a fifth research center in Michigan with a focus on advanced manufacturing technology for aviation and energy; software for applications like “smart” energy grids and health care technology; and IT training.
The center is expected to open later this year at the Visteon Village site in Van Buren Township, located almost midway between Detroit and Ann Arbor. At a cost of $100 million, GE plans to build a 100,000-square-foot building to house the lab. Michigan is providing $60 million in incentives over the next 12 years to support the center, trying to rebound from the devastating collapse of the auto industry.
GE plans to staff the center with about 1,200 employees, more than half the size of GE’s anchor research lab in Niskayuna, N.Y. Immelt said the location made sense given incentives offered by the state; the fact that the University of Michigan is already one of GE’s top 10 feeders of young talent; and much of the work is a fit with Michigan’s existing network of suppliers accustomed to working within the demanding specifications of the automotive industry.
It was one more example of GE’s opportunistic slant that has resulted in slow-starting technical ventures that accelerated into big businesses – like GE’s $200 million purchase in 2001 of Enron’s wind turbine business that generates $8 billion in revenue today – and in services such as commercial lending that have rocketed out of the gate only to bog down in the recession.
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