- Madeline Weiss, Director
How digital ubiquity is revolutionizing business
What do GE, Exelon, Cristal Global and Domino's Pizza have in common? The same thing that most companies strive to have in common with them: leveraging what GE calls "the industrial internet" - ubiquitous digital connectivity to revolutionize their businesses. It can change how the organize creates value for its customers as well as how it captures that value.
GE's wind farm deal with the global energy giant E.ON exemplifies the power of ubiquitous digital connectivity. In the past, GE would try to sell more of its turbines and associated equipment to power-generation companies as demand for power increased.
Currently, GE helps E.ON meet the demand with less equipment by extracting data from the sensors on its turbines to optimize equipment performance, utilization and maintenance. GE captures value by charging a percentage of E.ON's incremental revenue from improved performance. GE gains more revenue from its services than it would from selling more hardware.
Exelon leverages GE's suite of software across its entire power-generation portfolio, ranging from wind farms and solar projects to hydropower facilities and nuclear power plants. The analytics are designed to help the power company predict when its systems will need repairs, allowing operators to schedule maintenance and ensure parts are maintained in a timely fashion.
Cristal Global, the world's second-largest producer of titanium dioxide and a leading supplier of titanium chemicals found a way to comply with government regulations and standards as well as calculate the risk associated with not doing so. Cristal leveraged GE Digital's compliance and integrity management software to drive continuous improvement, reducing the risk of equipment failure by 2.12 million pounds per year and saving 3.12 million pounds over 10 years in inspection costs.
At the June 13-14 Advanced Practices Council meeting, Professor Karim Lakhani of the Harvard Business School and Rick McCulough, GE's Vice President of Software, will describe GE's transformation to a digital service company leveraging digital ubiquity.
Other meeting topics include:
Leading-edge developments in artificial intelligence (Haluk Demirkan, University of Washington)
Smart machines are gaining human capabilities, in some cases doing things faster and better. Professor Demirkan will explore how business processes and whole industries will be transformed as a result, emphasizing how smart machines can be designed to collaborate with people, extend their intelligence, and save time instead of replacing them.
Governance of predictive analytics (Michael Goul, Arizona State University)
After sharing an evolving framework for governing predictive analytics that includes the analytics of things, Professor Goul will explore the role of the CIO in delivering analytics of things innovations.
IT megatrends that are transforming industries (Lynda Applegate, Harvard Business School)
Professor Applegate will share results of the Delphi study she conducted for the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (Mass TLC). After Professor Applegate identifies the top IT mega trends that are transforming industries, APC members will use her tool to explore how these megatrends will transform their organizations and industries and, most important, how they can lead their organizations toward competitive advantage with these insights. Members of the Mass TLC will join in the exploration.
Building capability advantage (Ananth Raman, Harvard Business School)
Using the Essent case study, Professor Raman will explore the role of the CIO in integrating operations using lean manufacturing to drive operational excellence.
Competing in the age of digital ubiquity (Karim Lakhani, Harvard Business School)
Using the GE case study, Professor Lakhani and guests from GE will explore how connections, sensors and data are revolutionizing business.
Visit to MIT Media Lab (may be subject to change)
We hope that you can join us at the event. For more information, please contact us.