The Evo Project

When Jeff Immelt was appointed as the new CEO of GE Transportation Company, he was presented with tough choices. He was responsible with making recommendations for innovations that would improve the operation of the company. Within three years, the goal was to produce $10 million. A hybrid locomotive that was not altering prices as much as anticipated at the time was the source of concern. The market trends did not significantly change despite the demands of the hybrid system (Bartlett, et al. 2). Due to the project’s lack of commercial feasibility, Comte, the manager, felt uneasy about these suggestions. They were some of the sources of pressure that fostered more changes by Immelt.

As Immelt was taking charge, new demands arose amidst problems of internet bubble businesses. Immelt had to change his strategies to handle the changing business atmosphere in a politically unstable condition. Most of the problems arose from his predecessor. Their policies failed, and he did not want to continue with applying them if the business was to realize organic growth (Bartlett, et al. 4). In a move that proved his determination, Immelt hired some technology companies like Telemundo to work on building technological systems improvement. More companies came in to provide different changes as the business suggested. In doing so, he employed talented and skilled people whose jobs corresponded with the changes he was implementing (Bartlett, et al. 7).

The changes above were advancing developments in organic growth by aligning them to the type of operations as it were in the company’s style of management. All these went through to 2003 when the manager declared the end of more changes and commissioned every person to work and compete for the future. At that time, Evo had problems with the machines made. There were demands that they prove to the CEO that they could grow their business organically. This demand prompted GE to spend money in improving their growth. The challenge was the unwilling customers who did not want to purchase but offered promises and positive feedbacks. These reduced the growth of the company by diminishing the sales. The company realized at some point that they needed to change the focus on the market trends, later followed by the nurturing of the Evo babies to the market system (Bartlett, et al. 16). The coming in of Dineen intensified the focus on the ideas of Immelt. Unfortunately, they did not work out well, and several changes to the designs of locomotives had to come to some analysis. These went to regional strategies to accommodate people in specific places.

Reviews of the system employed in the company were broad as Dineed proposed extensive choices for the business to discuss and make it work. The first option was to leave the business committed under IB, the second was to recognize the potential of the hybrid system, and the last was to drop the IB after failure. The management tried to balance these options to what Immelt wanted for the growth of the business. These were successful as the project was generating around $2 billion on revenues. Intensive thinking by the managers had influences from the CEO who was tracking every development then and knew every impact in the business. He (the CEO) subjected the managers into hard decision making because the hybrid system was not to be postponed anymore. In the end, there were changes in their reviews regarding competition, prices, competition, resources among others.

Work Cited

Bartlett, Christopher, et al. “GE’s Imagination Breakthroughs: The Evo Project.” 30 June 2008, pp. 1-24, Harvard Business School.