Let’s be honest: November isn’t the best time to visit Helsinki. But the gloom that envelops the Finnish capital every autumn didn’t stop some 15,000 visitors from descending on Slush, one of the world’s largest tech gatherings, which drew 1,700 startups this year as well as GE, Google and Nokia.

There are only 5.4 million Finns but they’ve had an outsized influence on the technology of our modern lives. Finland, after all, is the home of the open-source operating system Linux as well as Nokia, which set off the explosive growth of mobile communications. “We have a tradition of working together,” says Peter Vesterbacka, co-founder of Rovio, the company behind Angry Birds, who helped start Slush in 2008. “Maybe it has something to do with our cold winter. If you don’t get your house built, you’ll die.”

Top: Wireless sensors will help remove the spaghetti of wires attached to patients in intensive care units. Above: Some 15,000 people visited Slush, one of the world’s largest tech gatherings that drew 1,700 startups this year as well as GE, Google and Nokia. Image credits: GE Reports

GE is tapping into this spirit. Last year, the company’s healthcare business opened the Health Innovation Village, a startup incubator that is helping 26 local companies develop products tied to healthcare and medicine. The Village just partnered with the U.S.-based  StartUp Health, the world’s largest digital health hub, which opened its first international location in Helsinki in November.

But GE is also using local brainpower to change the face of medicine by moving healthcare into the cloud. Its engineers in Helsinki are specifically looking at patient monitoring. They are building wireless tools that could one day be no larger than a Band-Aid and constantly stream heartbeat, blood pressure, respiration and other information into the cloud, where software could analyze it and alert doctors to anomalies and looming crises.

Within five years, the technology could enable patient monitoring over a wireless network that will allow doctors to learn what’s happening with a patient from any connected device. Image credit: GE Healthcare

Like many members of his team of 60 scientists and engineers, Muuranto came to GE after cutting his teeth at Nokia. The researchers, who specialize in everything from miniaturization and wireless protocols to user experience design, are developing the first generation of wireless sensors that can monitor heartbeat, blood pressure and several other parameters.

“The world is going wireless and wearable,” says GE’s Erno Muuranto. “We could run hospitals like smart factories. Wireless sensors and data analytics will help correctly diagnose patients in the ambulance.” Image credit: GE Reports

On a recent visit his lab, Muuranto attached one such device to a colleague and then monitored her heartbeat and blood oxygen level with an iPhone app the team built using Predix, a software platform GE developed specifically for the Industrial Internet. “It’s still early, but remember how quickly we moved from the mobile phones that looked like a brick to devices that slipped in our pockets,” he says.

GE Healthcare’s head office in Helsinki has the feel of a startup. It includes Warrior Coffee, an artisanal espresso joint complete with tattooed baristas piping Nirvana and Joy Division into the sitting area. Image credit: GE Reports

The first opportunity for the tech is to remove the spaghetti of wires attached to patients in intensive care units and to use algorithms and analytics to eliminate false alarms. “Some 90 percent of alarms are not actionable,” Muuranto says. “We are looking for ways to use signals from multiple sensors to generate meaningful alarms.”

Within five years, the technology could enable patient monitoring over a wireless network that will allow doctors to learn what’s happening with a patient from any connected device.

The sensors would draw power from a tiny integrated battery and use radio waves to communicate with a receiver either in the patient’s pocket or in his hospital room. Outside the hospital, the information aggregated locally from the sensors could be relayed into a cellular network and automatically provide doctors and hospitals with round-the-clock patient monitoring and an uninterrupted flow of data.

GE and other companies are already building so-called medical body area networks (MBANs) and have applied to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for access to the radio spectrum, where wireless medical devices could operate.

“This is the digital health we’ve been talking about,” says Mikko Kauppinen, finance director at GE Healthcare Finland and cofounder of the Health Innovation Village. “This is different from gadgets. We already know how to build super-robust monitoring devices you see today in hospitals that meet FDA standards. This is a platform. Mobile phones got smaller and our devices will also shrink. We are building an ecosystem for Industrial Internet for the body.” Says Kauppinen: “It will transform patient monitoring. Before long, you could see these devices everywhere.”

The future of wireless healthcare is dawning in Helsinki. Image credit: GE Reports

For retailers, Black Friday and Cyber Monday can make or break a year. For global industrial companies like GE Oil & Gas, demand for solutions, resources, and technology doesn’t come up on a single weekend – it comes up every day. Around the world, the business extracts, transports, and refines natural resources, providing full-stream solutions to hundreds of customers for more than 20 years. Last year, the business generated $19 billion in revenues.

Talking to investors this week preceding GE’s Annual Outlook Investor Meeting, Lorenzo Simonelli, chief executive of GE Oil & Gas, said the business is well-positioned for long-term growth and endurance, and he sees valuable opportunities in the midst of industry volatility. For Simonelli, the GE Store– the way that GE shares technology and knowledge between businesses – is enhancing innovation and capabilities for GE Oil & Gas. In return, the business is giving back to GE’s other businesses and industrial verticals. Here are a few examples of how the business works with the GE Store:

Taking from the Store:

Additive Manufacturing– For years, GE Global Research has been exploring applications for additive manufacturing. GE Aviation was the first business to experiment with this technology, but GE Oil & Gas produced another first – in Japan. Earlier this year, the business introduced the country’s first metal 3D printers, opening opportunities for substantial improvements to supply chain, manufacturing time, and integrated design methods. This technology is currently piloting at GE’s Kariwa plant in the Niigata Prefecture, Japan, where the business is 3D printing control valve parts for various applications across the Energy industry.

Imaging & Diagnostics – When doctors need to look inside the human body, they use a number of medical imaging and diagnostics technologies at their disposal. GE Oil & Gas is doing the same – for pipelines. Using scanning, x-ray and ultrasound capabilities from GE Healthcare, GE Oil & Gas can perform noninvasive, efficient inspections for pipelines operating thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface. Microscopic cracks, corrosion, and other evidence of wear and tear can be fixed before they become a problem.

Compressor Technology – GE Oil & Gas machines work on land and in the sea, but they’re doing with help from the sky. GE’s high pressure ratio compressor, a state-of-the-art compression technology for various gas processes, draws from GE Aviation’s aerodynamic expertise to produce the business’ smallest, lightest, most efficient compressor yet – lowering power consumption, reducing operating costs, and increasing reliability for substantial savings. 

Winning Projects – Last year, GE Oil & Gas partnered with GE Energy Management to deliver a suite of solutions for one of the world’s largest electrical LNG plants in Texas. Freeport LNG selected GE to supply compressors from GE Oil & Gas and motors and drivers from GE Energy Management, which provided a comprehensive solution for their project.

Giving to the Store: 

Tier 4 Locomotive– At the beginning of the year, the EPA’s Tier 4 emissions standards were put into effect, moving many freight locomotive businesses to invest in new aftertreatment systems and technology. With careful planning and investment, GE Transportation produced the GE Tier 4 solution without aftertreatment technologies, leveraging compressor and turbine expertise from GE Oil & Gas and our Marine engine business. To date, more than 1,000 orders have been placed for GE’s Tier 4 freight locomotives – a huge win made possible by the GE Store.

Powering Thailand– The developing world needs power, but power plants are both costly and slow to implement. In response, GE Power’s LM6000-PF+ aeroderivative gas turbine is flipping the switch and supplying Bangkok with power– even in the most challenging situations. Most recently installed in Egypt in only three months, the turbine’s origin stems from technologies from GE Aviation (the CF6 engine pictured above), GE Energy Management, and GE Oil & Gas, which helped develop the gearbox connecting the turbine to generators.

Talent Transfer– Dan Heintzelman, the former head of GE Oil & Gas, is currently working across GE’s industrial businesses to enhance services, advanced manufacturing and product development, using best practices and experience from years of energy sector experience to move the company’s strategy forward. Lorenzo Simonelli, the business’ current chief executive, came from GE Transportation, which is an example of both a give and take for GE Oil & Gas and the GE Store.

Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE, recently spoke with CNBC Mad Money’s Jim Cramer about the company’s digital industrial future — and the outlook appears bright.

“The long-term bets we’ve made on technology, digitization, globalization — those are all paying off right now,” said Immelt. GE is integrating software with hardware, capitalizing on new capabilities and opportunities that position the company for strong organic growth, margin expansion, and returns for its investors.

Check out full interview on CNBC,tune in to GE’s Annual Outlook Investor Meeting on Dec. 16, or sign up for GE’s investor newsletter for more information.

By the time you’re done reading this story, heart disease will have killed nearly 40 people in Europe. The picture elsewhere isn’t much different. The World Health Organization reported earlier this year that more people die from cardiovascular disease than from any other cause.

The grim statistics is what keep scientists like Anja Brau motivated. “Cardiovascular disease isn’t just a European issue, it’s a human issue,” says Brau, director of global cardiac magnetic resonance at GE Healthcare. Brau and her team of cardiac specialists, physicists, engineers and software developers at GE Global Research in Munich are writing algorithms and building other digital tools that take MRI imaging data generated during heart scans and quickly reconstruct it so that doctors can see what’s going on.

Their technology, ViosWorks* can do the job in 10 to 15 minutes, rather than the more typical 45 minutes to an hour. It displays the results in 7 dimensions – 3 in space, 1 in time, and 3 in velocity direction – showing the actual blood flow in the heart as a moving image. This is critical during heart attacks, which deprive the heart of blood and oxygen.

GE Healthcare brought the technology to this year’s meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), which is taking place this week in Chicago. RSNA is the world’s largest gathering of radiologists, drawing an expected 60,000 visitors.

ViosWorks* can help physicians distinguish scarred or damaged tissue from healthy heart muscle and tell them whether blood is flowing through the heart the way it should be.

Top GIFs: ViosWorks* combines 3D cardiac anatomy, function, and flow in 1 free-breathing, approximate 8 minute scan. It enables visualization of the whole chest and beating heart from any vantage point – any structure, in any plane – simultaneously seeing ventricles contracting and accurately quantifying blood flow. Above: Vector image demonstrates the directional flow of blood in the heart and vessels. Color depicts velocity of blood flow. For example, red may indicate accelerated flow in areas of valvular abnormalities *7 dimensional viewing capabilities of the heart; 3 in space, 1 in time, 3 in velocity direction. Image and GIF credits: GE Healthcare

Every second counts. Doctors need to assess damage as quickly as possible to administer the right treatment, prevent death, speed recovery and reduce healthcare costs. The CDC Foundation estimates that by 2030, annual direct medical costs associated with cardiovascular diseases will rise to more than $818 billion, while lost productivity costs could exceed $275 billion. For comparison, the U.S., which has the world’s largest defense budget, spends on the military about $600 billion annually.

ViosWorks* demonstrates extraordinary resolution, previously unattainable with conventional imaging and post processing technology. Now with Arterys software, large image datasets of the whole chest can be post processed and evaluated in real-time via cloud technology. Image credit GE Healthcare

But it’s not no easy. MRI works by “acquiring” the image of the organ one thin slice of tissue after another – kind of like rebuilding a salami stick from individual slices. However, the procedure can take up to an hour and patients have to remain still. This is doubly difficult when imaging body parts like the heart, which keeps moving.

ViosWorks* delivers a three-dimensional spatial and velocity-encoded dataset at every time point during the cardiac cycle, yielding high resolution, time-resolved images of the beating heart and a measure of the speed and direction of blood flow at each location. Image credit: GE Healthcare

The software doesn’t need a specialized machine and works with existing MRIs. ViosWorks* also has a major knock-on effect on the rest of the cardiac healthcare system, because MRI scanning acts as an important gatekeeper for determining what treatment cardiac patients go on to receive next.

Says Brau: “As exciting and encouraging as these breakthroughs are, they are also just the beginning of what we can achieve.”

*Not yet commercially available

From the Brink: As part of a regular series featuring content from BRINK, François Austin discusses the need for greater international cooperation on sustainable energy.

Energy sustainability is not only an opportunity to transform societies and grow economies, but it is also a necessity—a prerequisite to meet growing energy demand in many parts of the world and to reduce the global carbon footprint. In order to build a strong basis for prosperity and competitiveness, individual countries must balance the three core dimensions of what Oliver Wyman and the World Energy Council have defined as the energy trilemma: affordability and access, energy security and environmental sustainability.

The annual Energy Trilemma Index ranks 130 countries on their performance in meeting the energy trilemma and assesses how well countries are balancing the three dimensions.

As highlighted in the 2015 Index released today, the transition towards balanced and sustainable energy systems is slowly taking place. Over the last five years, positive developments have been recorded in access to energy, share of renewables in the electricity generation mix and rate of energy-efficiency improvements. Global energy intensity has decreased by 4.2 percent and CO2 emissions intensity has fallen by 4.5 percent in that time, while the global electrification rate has risen to 85 percent with an additional 222 million people gaining access to electricity from 2010-2012.

Still, many countries face obstacles to achieving a successful balance across the energy dimensions. This year, only two countries, Switzerland and Sweden, managed to obtain an AAA balance score across all three dimensions. The United Kingdom’s score was amended to AAB, as its energy equity performance suffered in comparison to other leading countries.

Several countries, including the UK, Japan and Germany, are identified on the 2015 Watch List as being likely to experience a significant change in Index performance in the near future. These positive or negative changes can be driven by deep transitions in their energy systems—be they of a regulatory nature, concerning the energy supply mix or related to infrastructure changes to improve the resilience of their energy systems. In 2015, South Africa and the U.S. were added to the negative watch list, while the Philippines and Serbia are now on watch for overall positive trends in the coming years.

The energy challenges faced by each country are unique and complex, as evidenced by the variability in performance across the trilemma dimensions and contextual factors. Yet the transnational nature of energy markets and environmental issues necessitates a perspective that extends past the country level. Energy leaders have emphasized the need to adopt regionally coordinated approaches to energy resources, infrastructure and regulation.

Accordingly, the Index report includes regional profiles designed to characterize the challenges and opportunities faced by various regions in relation to the energy trilemma. The growth in global investment in renewable energy in Asia is noted alongside the rapid growth of greenhouse gas emissions there, while Latin America faces increasing challenges driven by changing weather patterns and concerns related to the energy-water-food nexus.

In the lead-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris on November 30 through December 11, energy sector leaders have spoken about the need for a clear international dialogue and a robust, sustainable policy framework to ensure research and investment is targeted at delivering sustainable energy systems. Progress across the dimensions of the energy trilemma remains slow, and can only be sped up by creating such frameworks that give certainty to investors.

(Top GIF: Video courtesy of GE)

This piece first appeared in BRINK.

François Austin, Partner and Head of Oliver Wyman’s Energy Practice, has 20 years of consulting experience focused on translating business strategies and ideas into demonstrable results. François specializes in business strategy, post-merger integration, performance improvement, risk management, and leadership development, and has led a number of change improvement programs working at board level within the Oil and Gas, Utilities and Financial Services sectors.

All views expressed are those of the author.

Making football safer may not only be about the equipment players wear; it could have just as much to do with the turf under their cleats. This systemic approach to improving safety in football was highlighted last week when GE, the National Football League and Under Armour announced the three final winners of Head Health Challenge II. In an open competition, the University of Washington, Viconic Sporting and the Army Research Laboratory bested four other finalists to find innovative approaches for preventing brain injury and tracking head impacts in real time.

At Detroit’s Viconic Sporting, researchers are developing a layer meant to be installed under synthetic turf to make fields safer for players. The company’s engineers have developed a “shockpad” that can be used under turf and playgrounds to reduce the risk of injury for all players, from youth to professional athletes. The material is studded with small hollow cones that can crush down to 10 percent of their original height to absorb force. It’s already widely used in the automotive industry and in military applications to better protect today’s soldiers.

“Viconic’s underlayer acts like a spring underneath the artificial turf surfaces, absorbing the energy of an impact and reducing the risk of injury,” says Joel Cormier, the company’s director of development engineering. “We have engineered our system to ensure we don’t change the playability of the surface, so players can continue to focus on their performance.”

Viconic will use the award money to develop the material further and optimize head-impact protection while minimizing the chances of lower-limb injuries.

University of Washington and allied private sector researchers, meanwhile, are developing a new impact-absorbing helmet designed to mitigate the type of forces most likely to cause skull fractures and traumatic brain injuries. They are testing industrial design elements created specifically to slow the head’s acceleration after an impact. The intention is to build gear for elite pros, then extend the product line down to high school and youth players.

“The next innovation in football-helmet technology is long overdue,” says Dave Marver, CEO of Seattle’s VICIS, which is developing the technology. “Our helmet features a novel impact-absorbing structure that performs very differently than today’s helmets, but offers the style, performance and overall experience players desire.”

Engineers and scientists at the Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Md., round out this challenge’s winners. They propose using smart materials to make tethers that connect a player’s helmet to the torso. The material is built to stretch when pulled at slow or moderate speeds, such as during normal sports action. But when pulled quickly, as when a player’s head snaps back during a backwards fall, the material offers enough resistance to prevent the back of the head from a hard, injury-causing head-to-ground impact.

The team’s conceptual prototype uses a close-fitting body harness and a snap-in helmet insert to connect the tethers between the helmet and the body. Eric Wetzel, who works for the Army developing materials to protect soldiers, realizes that an entirely new piece of equipment might not be viewed favorably by football players. “Athletes could certainly run faster and jump higher if they wore no helmet, if they wore no pads, but they’ve learned to live with certain compromises to protect their well-being,” he says. “This has the potential to be the next generation of protective devices.”

The next step for the winners is to carry through with the challenge’s intent: prepare for market. All three Head Health Challenge II-winning teams still have work to do before the new helmet, turf underlayer or protective head tethers see any time on the playing field. Still, they open the door to a new era of safer football.

As farmers once again rise to the challenge of overcoming resource scarcity with the help of water-conservation technologies, other industries should take note. Part of a series exploring what can be achieved on the energy and the environmental front this decade.

Necessity is the mother of innovation. Ask farmers, who have long lived by these words — as the need to feed communities gave rise to aqueducts, plows and seed drills. With the next agricultural revolution poised to take off in the face of increasingly scarce water supplies, other industries can learn from how the sector harnesses the latest technologies to produce more crop per drop.

Farmers will need to continue to maximize yield, but will now have to do so with less water. With three-quarters of our irrigated agriculture experiencing water shortages, innovation within the agriculture sector and application of new technologies — such as precision irrigation and real-time data management — will be critical to better managing limited freshwater resources and feeding growing populations around the world.

Today, half of the world’s population is impacted by water shortages. One in four cities is located in an area with an over-allocated watershed, and farmers around the world have been forced to fallow fields due to lack of water supplies. Agriculture accounts for about 70 percent of global water withdrawals (and over 90 percent of consumption), and demand could grow by 20 percent by 2030 without efficiency gains.

The traditional solution to this problem has been to build more supply infrastructure — reservoirs, canals, diversion — but options are becoming increasingly narrow, as we run into the limitations of what nature can provide in many parts of the world. We need to get smarter about how we use every drop.

While water may not be the traditional muse for the high-tech industry, the answer to the global water challenge must rest in part on technology to better manage scarce water supplies — especially in the agricultural sector. Technology has the potential to help the sector reduce water consumption and remotely measure surface and groundwater levels, providing real-time data to help make more informed withdrawal decisions. These improvements could lead to better water management at the local level, and build sustainability into our global water outlook.

In California, the drought has limited water allocations from surface sources, forcing farmers to rely even more on groundwater supplies. These valuable “water banks” risk depletion, yet we haven’t been able to say when — due to the lack of data. While the state works on developing sustainable groundwater plans that work to rebalance the current water challenge across the state, advancements in satellite technology could play an important part in the solution.

NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) has been able to provide the first picture of the state of water resources below the surface, using two satellites that measure the impact of large deposits of water, such as the aquifer under the Central Valley in California, on the earth’s gravitational field. The latest analysis shows that one-third of the world’s aquifers are being rapidly depleted. This type of data, when integrated with other sources of remote sensing information on surface water conditions, could be used by farmers, utilities and regulators can make more informed decisions on withdrawals and replenishment needs, including those in the Central Valley.

On-the-ground technology is just as important to improve water management — if not more. Drip irrigation systems are becoming increasingly popular on farms around the world. The more direct watering and fertilizer application from drip irrigation systems have shown positive results, often achieving significant water reductions.

Center pivot irrigation uses sprinklers attached to a center pivot to more evenly distribute water to plants. University of Georgia faculty improved the system to allow farmers to remotely turn off specific nozzles on pivot irrigators as they cross over roads, ponds or other areas where crops aren’t grown.

While improvements to drip or center pivot irrigation may not be the most trendy water-efficiency technologies on the market, they have the potential to demonstrate water savings in the next five years if applied at scale. Investments in this area can start changing the trajectory of our current water consumption to a more sustainable direction.

In the not so distant future, we may see agricultural water savings right down the street. A new trend has emerged for high-value agricultural production — vertical farming. Vertical farming companies report using much less water than traditional farming and generating less waste. If the method can overcome the high cost of lighting required to sustain plant growth, fresh food can be grown in places once deemed unsuitable for agriculture year-round.

Farmers have long endured the variance of weather patterns and continued to feed the world — so there’s no doubt they will rise to the challenge of producing more with less. With farmers and the tech sector working together on solutions to better manage what limited resources we have, there’s hope that the next agricultural revolution can spark a transformation in how other industries approach water management, as well.

Giulio Boccaletti is Global Managing Director, Water, at The Nature Conservancy.

All views expressed are those of the author.

In the 1950s, GE hired renowned comics artists, including George “Inky” Roussos of Batman fame, to draw a series of books called Adventures in Science. The series covered everything from space travel to electricity, and the company is now taking its heroes out of retirement. It partnered with the storytelling app Wattpad and asked its resident writers to create short fiction based on the ideas featured in six books with titles ranging from Adventures in Electricity to Inside the Atom. Take a look.

Thomas Edison’s light bulb patent was 15 years old when Wilhelm Roentgen discovered X-rays and proved their power by imaging the bones inside his wife’s hand. “I’ve seen my death,” she reportedly said after seeing the picture.

But GE co-founder Elihu Thomson had longevity in mind. A year after Roentgen’s discovery, he modified Edison’s light bulb to emit X-rays and used it to build the first X-ray machine. It allowed doctors to diagnose bone fractures and locate “foreign objects in the body” and launched GE into the healthcare business.

Elihu Thomson’s X-ray machine from 1896. Image Credit: GE. Top Image: The latest GE imaging systems like the Revolution CT can produce detailed images of the vascular system. Image Credit: GE Healthcare.

Today, GE Healthcare makes everything from advanced imaging machines to super-resolution microscopes and software that can be used to process, analyze and probe for insights terabytes of data produced by the machines. The business generated $18 billion in revenues in 2014.

The skull and carotid arteries imaged by GE’s Revolution CT Scanner. Image credit: GE Healthcare

Some of the technology has been on display at the 101th annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago this week. The RSNA is the radiological industry’s “Grand Slam” gathering and trade show that was expected to draw 60,000 visitors and exhibitors this year. GE attended the inaugural meeting in 1914 .

An Edison X-ray ad from 1897. Image credit: GE

This year at RSNA, GE announced the first GE Health Cloud that will initially gather data from 500,000 GE imaging machines, allow doctors to collaborate online, and let independent software vendors to develop apps in the new cloud ecosystem. The GE machines that will supply the data draw on decades of research and commercial development starting with Thomson’s fluoroscope, the world’s first commercially available X-ray machine.

GE’s William Coolidge invented what is considered the modern X-ray tube. He also developed an early portable X-ray machine. Coolidge’s X-ray machine was used in military hospitals during World War I. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

In 1932, GE’s Irving Langmuir won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work that led to early coronary artery imaging. In 1973, his colleague Ivar Giaever received the Nobel Prize in Physics for research that led to the first GE MRI machine a decade later. In the 1980s their colleague John Schenck at GE Global Research took the first brain selfie with a GE MRI scanner. The list of innovations goes on. Take a walk with us from the past into the future.

General Electric researcher and scientist Irving Langmuir receives the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in Stockholm, Sweden. Langmuir was associate director of the GE Research Laboratory at the time. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

Dr. Ivar Giaever, 1972 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, poses with his superconductive tunneling experiment. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

The Nobel acceptance telegram from Ivar Giaever. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

In 1939, GE medical scanners produced X-ray images of mummies for the New York World’s Fair. Scientists are still using GE imaging machines to study ancient objects, including mummies, a baby woolly mammoth and a piece of a sunken ship. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

John Schenck‘s work is featured in Breakthrough, the new six-part science TV series developed by GE and National Geographic Channel. He took the first brain selfie with a GE MRI scanner. Image credit : GE Reports

Top image: An MRI image of the brain. The method, called diffusion tractography, is displaying some of the long white matter bundles (red: left-right, green: anterior-posterior, blue: head-foot). Above: This image shows complex patterns of connectivity of the human cortex measured in vivo with MRI via diffusion of water molecules in axons in the white matter. Image credit: GE Global Research

A 3D view of the human heart’s mitral valve – two leaflets that open and close with each heartbeat. The mitral valve ensures that blood flows in one direction copy. The image was taken with “4D” ultrasound. Image credit: GE Healthcare

The pair of “bubbles” in this image are actually a twin pregnancy. Each of the amniotic sacs has a 6-week-old embryo inside. The image was taken with “4D” ultrasound. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An image of the body with GE’s Revolution CT scanner. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An image of the heart with GE’s Revolution CT scanner. Image credit: GE Healthcare

An MR image of the liver. A 16 year old obese patient with elevated liver enzymes and fatty liver infiltration on ultrasound and MR. The MR elastography (MR Touch) was performed to evaluate tissue stiffness prior to a planned biopsy. The MRE showed normal liver stiffness, indicating the presence of simple steatosis, but no fibrosis or inflammation. The biopsy was cancelled. Image credit: GE Healthcare

Try finding and untying single hairs within a tangled knot. FlightPlan for liver software makes identifying tumor-feeding vessels easier by highlighting the cancer-feeding vessels with high sensitivity. Image credit: GE Healthcare

ViosWorks* combines 3D cardiac anatomy, function, and flow in 1 free-breathing, approximate 8 minute scan. It enables visualization of the whole chest and beating heart from any vantage point – any structure, in any plane – simultaneously seeing ventricles contracting and accurately quantifying blood flow. *7 dimensional viewing capabilities of the heart; 3 in space, 1 in time, 3 in velocity direction. Image credit: GE Healthcare

The skull and carotid arteries captured by GE’s Revolution CT scanner. Image credit: GE Healthcare.

You can find more images on GE Healthcare’s Pulse site.

In October, GE launched Current, a startup focusing on bringing to market a holistic energy-as-a-service offering absent from the industry today. Former IBM Watson executive John Gordon just became Current’s first chief digital officer.

At IBM, Gordon was responsible for launching innovation programs like Smarter Cities, and his new GE role will allow him to build on that expertise. Intelligent street lamps developed by Current are already gathering data in San Diego and Jacksonville. They could make everything from parking to traffic and law enforcement easier.

Gordon sat down with GE Reports to talk about his job.

GE Reports: What’s the idea behind Current?

John Gordon: Current is rethinking the most pervasive infrastructure in industry: lighting and energy.  Let’s look at intelligent lighting. It’s the equivalent of the cell phone in the industrial world, as we look into the future.  Once the cell phone added data connectivity, GPS, a camera and a microphone it became a platform for innovation. It put all those sensors on a single platform and enabled developers to drive all kinds of innovation for consumers that many of us would never have thought of.

Since lighting is already everywhere, it will also become a ubiquitous platform for data and innovation in the commercial, industrial, and city markets. Our intelligent LED street lamps can already see and hear things and measure air quality, for example.

GER: How will you make that happen?

JG: Initially, we will develop the core LED lighting technology and infuse it with sensors.  Then we’ll add analytics and the initial set of software solutions that will inspire the industry and spur new ideas.

We won’t build all of the solutions, just like Apple doesn’t write all of the apps for iPhones. We’ll build enough for people to see what’s possible and give them ideas on how to leverage the data. In parallel, we will also partner with people in the industry. The goal is to open up this intelligent lighting environment as a platform for innovation in the industrial world.

GER: What kinds of applications?

JG: Outdoor intelligent lighting can help improve traffic and optimize parking. Indoors, we can use it to manage inventory and security, monitor machines and equipment, and spot problems before they break out. The applications are different but they fundamentally use the same intelligent platform.

Light fixtures like this LED street lamp will be a key component of the “intelligent city.” The lamp has cameras to monitor traffic and parking and a rugged microphone to detect potential crimes. Image credit: GE Reports

GER: Most smartphones run on iOS and Android operating systems. This makes it easy for developers to write apps. Do you have something similar for the industrial world?

JG: Absolutely. GE developed Predix, which is a cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet. GE engineers are already using it to write apps for everything from wind turbines to computed tomography scanners. In September, GE opened Predix to customers and outside developers so they can write their own apps. The apps will be available in an “industrial app store.”

At Current, we will focus on expanding and enriching the data that is available to developers and making it available to Predix.  While the Predix team will build the common industrial platform, we’ll be adding the specific sensors – starting with LEDs – data enrichments and analytics to create the “nervous system” of business.

GER: How closely do you work with GE Digital and the team at GE’s software center in San Ramon?

JG: We have a global team focused on infusing infrastructure with intelligence.  We’re starting with LED transformation and will have a significant group embedded in San Ramon and building business solutions on top of the Predix platform. From the big GE perspective, it’s also really important that there is a common analytics platform for all of GE. Current is one of the early businesses taking advantage of that.

GER: When Current launched, it said it would look at “energy as a service.” Can you explain that?

JG: The lighting and energy system has been around for a long time and is great at transmitting electrons.  But at Current we believe it can be more.  Lighting and energy literally touch every corner of business and we think it can become the nervous system for organizations. 

Building that nervous system is changing our business model. Before, GE would drop off lights at the customer’s site and install them. It was a transactional relationship. With the service relationship, Current is now getting in the business where it’s driving value for a customer on a continuous basis, either through the solutions that we are providing or through making data available to them or their partners.

It’s now an ongoing relationship that provides outcomes to our clients by letting them understand, interpret and interact with every part of their organization. It also provides GE with an ongoing revenue stream. In the lighting business, this is a very different world.

GER: Current has started two intelligent lighting pilots in San Diego and Jacksonville. Why should cities pay attention?

JG: It’s easy. You’ll have eyes and ears everywhere that are able to help you understand what’s going on. You end up with safer and more efficient cities for driving and parking, you end up with more satisfied citizens… all while paying less for energy than ever before.

Two of the world’s most efficient gas turbines, made by GE in Greenville, South Carolina, will drive a new power plant built by Moxie Energy and Caithness Energy in Salem Township in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. The 1,029-megawatt (MW) facility, called Caithness Moxie Freedom generation plant, will tap natural gas from the world’s most prolific shale gas area, the Marcellus Formation, and generate enough electricity to power approximately 1 million American homes when the plant comes online in 2018. It will help Pennsylvania and the wider region shift away from coal to cleaner energy.

The deal is also the latest example of what GE calls the GE Store. The project involves GE Energy Financial Services as a lead financing partner. The unit, like GE Capital Aviation Services, is one of the core GE Capital businesses that will remain with GE after its exit from banking.

Above: Two of the world’s most efficient gas turbines, made by GE in Greenville, South Carolina, will drive a new power plant capable of producing enough electricity to power approximately 1 million American homes. Top: The Harriet at a testing stand in Greenville, S.C. Images credit: GE Power

GE Energy Financial Services and its co-leads arranged $592 million of debt financing for construction and operation of the plant with a syndicate of banks including BNP Paribas, Citigroup and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. The project also backed equity from Global Infrastructure Partners, John Hancock and First Reserve as preferred equity investors.

“Working with GE on both the technology and the financing helps us move forward with confidence in the construction and operation of the Caithness Moxie Freedom project,” says Leslie Gelber, president of Caithness Energy.

The huge turbines — GE calls them HA, but workers nicknamed them Harriet — come in two flavors. The 7HA is engineered for countries such as the United States, and parts of Asia, where the electric current oscillates at 60 hertz. The 9HA is used in countries operating at 50 hertz.

Moxie and Caithness also purchased two GE steam turbines, the control system, associated equipment and a long-term services contract. The power plant will use a combined-cycle design that can generate up to 50 percent more electricity from the same fuel than a traditional simple-cycle plant.

The two gas turbines will first extract energy from burning natural gas and use it to spin electricity generators. Then, a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) captures waste heat that would otherwise escape through the exhaust stack to create steam that is then converted to electricity.

“Being selected for the Moxie Freedom project shows the power of the GE Store,” says Joe Mastrangelo, president and chief executive officer of gas power systems at GE Power, referring to the idea that different GE businesses can share knowledge and research to quickly build innovative products. “The technology inside our gas turbines comes from across the GE portfolio.” Referring to the steam turbine technology, Mastrangelo said GE Power also has a “superior steam-tail capability with the addition of Alstom to our business.”

Harriet combines designs and materials developed by GE scientists for supersonic jet engines and other advanced technology. They include removable, aerodynamic blades made from single-crystal alloys and thermal barrier coatings that withstand high temperatures for improved efficiency.

During validation testing at the factory, the turbines use more than 3,000 sensors to collect mechanical, temperature and exhaust data to ensure they operate reliably and efficiently. The design gives Harriet a combined-cycle efficiency exceeding 61 percent — the Holy Grail in power generation because transforming such a large percentage of fuel into energy significantly lowers the cost of electricity generation.

The turbines allow the entire power plant to ramp up from zero to full output in just 30 minutes, giving utilities the flexibility to respond to changing power demands and also to incorporate variable sources of generation such as the wind and the sun.

At the Moxie plant, the turbines will operate in a single-shaft combined-cycle configuration where gas turbines and steam turbines both turn the same generator. As a result, the operators will be able to run one unit while the other is offline — the first time such a design has been used with the 7HA turbine.

GE’s recent acquisition of Alstom’s power and grid business boosted its global installed power-generation base to some 1,800 gigawatts. No other maker of power-generation equipment has a larger footprint.

The combination now allows GE to sell packages of equipment, such as the HA turbines in combination with Alstom steam turbines, and helps customers lower their fixed costs. For example, in Sewaren, New Jersey, PSEG’s combined-cycle power plant will use a 7HA.02 gas turbine and an Alstom HRSG. In Pakistan, the Bhikki combined-cycle power plant will use two 9HA.01 gas turbines and an Alstom steam turbine. And in Texas, Exelon’s Colorado Bend and Wolf Hollow power plants will each use two 7HA.02 gas turbines and two Alstom HRSGs.

To date, GE has received orders for 23 HA units, among 78 that have been technically selected* for use in power plants being planned globally.

The company built a $250 million testing center in Greenville, South Carolina, where engineers have put the Harriet turbines through rigorous tests. The off-grid, full-speed, full-load test bed uses 4,500 sensors and employs more than 200 engineers, who push the machines to operate in stressful conditions. Validation tests rate the reliability of cutting-edge technology to make it easier for projects using the machines to secure financing, insurance and trust among customers making the critical decision to buy the huge turbines. The 7HA.01 model passed validation testing in November.

*A technical selection is one of the first steps in developing a new power plant. It means that if the power plant is constructed and commissioned, it will use GE gas turbines. Following technical selection, a developer will proceed with securing financing, permitting and more.

Achieving the SDGs will require the private sector to work in authentic partnership with civil society and resist going back to business as usual.

Through an incredibly participatory process, the United Nations brought the world together to launch the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). All 193 Member States agreed in September to an ambitious agenda of 17 new global development goals that aim to end poverty, promote well-being and protect the planet.

Yet I find myself wondering whether we will go back to business as usual, or will the SDGs really spur us to collaborate between sectors to achieve real change by 2030?

Many have criticized the SDGs for including too many issues — 17 goals with 169 targets — raising the risk that we could splinter off into our silos to work toward our “favorite” goal, forgetting the importance of long-term policy changes through strong local institutions. Goal 16 addresses this systemic, societal change:

Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

Unfortunately, the private sector and local civil society often find themselves at odds on issues of accountable governance, social inclusion and peacebuilding; but meaningful joint investment to achieve Goal 16 are important now more than ever.

Courtesy of The Global Goals

Private Sector and the SDGs

Businesses can be some of the most powerful drivers of change, bringing innovation and resources to the world’s development challenges. There is no shortage of good ideas, and each company must decide how the SDGs best fit into their strategy. But as Unilever CEO Paul Polman has stated, the private sector also must move past “declarationist behavior” that is long on words but short on meaningful action.

Development professionals and multilaterals also need to see companies not only as potential funders, but as authentic partners. We must unify efforts to engage the private sector, moving beyond the many existing platforms to more efficiently coordinate on implementation and reporting.

For example, GE partnered with our organization, PartnersGlobal, to support rule-of-law efforts in developing countries. The initiative is establishing self-sustaining “conflict resolution centers” that seek to manage and mediate the conflicts that arise as countries transition to more democratic systems.

The Recipe for Joint Action on Goal 16

Partnering with businesses to work for good governance and peacebuilding isn’t a matter of mobilizing more money — but rather investing more wisely and reducing redundancy. Here are some recommendations for forging successful partnerships on Goal 16:

• Political Pluralism. Invest in dialogue skills and collaboration platforms; participate actively in policy discussions; and insist that those most affected by government decisions have a seat at the table.
• We need a new model of leadership (in government, business and civil society) to approach development with a systemic view of change.
• Authentic partnership. Work with local organizations and actively build capacity and empower local ownership in decision-making.
• Business Skills. This is crucial for a thriving civil society sector, which is necessary for good governance and healthy advocacy.
• International Norms. Engage locally in the debate on the application of international norms as a starting place for dialogue.
• Impact Investing. There is a growing body of support for impact investing, beyond just corporate philanthropy.
• Radical Transparency. Transparency is the key ingredient of building trust between organizations working in partnership on development goals.
• Access to Information. We all need access to credible information in order to build common understanding, including Internet access and Freedom of Information Laws.
• Share Information. Be forthcoming about successful strategies and programs, but also about what doesn’t work!
• Taxes. Corporations (and civil society) should pay their fair share of taxes under the law and be transparent about their interactions with government.
• Do No Harm. All operations and social investment should be conducted with clear and ongoing conflict analysis.

Fundamentally, companies should think of themselves as consumers of good governance and seek partnerships to help contribute to long-term policy solutions for all the SDGs. What is required of us now is to keep from going back to business as usual, rise above short-termism and commit to working together. Although the SDGs are ambitious, by working together with the right tools, we can achieve these ambitious goals for a more prosperous, safer and healthier world.

(Top image: Courtesy of the UN)

Julia Roig, President of PartnersGlobal, works with an international network of 19 Partners’ affiliate organizations to build effective multi-sector partnerships for sustainable development.

All views expressed are those of the author.

He’s a coworker unlike any other — not afraid to wade into dangerous situations, take on boring tasks for hours on end or answer obscure maintenance questions you may have. “He” is really an it, a robot called the Guardian, which is part of a system of airborne, sea- and land-based robots being developed by GE to autonomously check assets like locomotives for damage, probe for abnormalities like unusually high temperatures and alert maintenance crews when it finds something amiss.

The Guardians and machines like it will be the newest in a growing fleet of smart technology taking on tasks classified as the “three D’s”: dirty, dull and dangerous. Some of their ilk are built like snakes to crawl through pipelines and machinery of all types to inspect their insides. Others are built to swim through irradiated nuclear reactor pools to look for damage and keep surfaces clean. Another variety is taking to the air, flying around refineries to inspect flare stacks.

Top image: GE’s is developing robotic perception software that will extend to a variety of robotic systems such as the one pictured up top. Image credit: GE Global Research Above: Stinger, which is a bit taller than an average human, is a steerable unmanned underwater vehicle that inspects nuclear reactor vessels. GIF credit: GE Hitachi Energy

A number of automation experts believe the world is now entering into a new era of industrial robotics. According to them, smart, mobile, collaborative machines are about to change the face of work. They see a future at hand where technicians, miners, plant workers, first responders, scientists and others are standing shoulder to shoulder with machines built to learn from human colleagues how to complete a new task, ask for help when they encounter a problem and perform assignments on their own or with teammates.

 An Early prototype of GE Guardian Rail Robot – GE is developing a new platform to optimize the management and inspection of railroad assets. This will help increase reliability and the speed at which rail cars move through the rail network. Image credit: GE Global Research

“Robots are the next great industrial tool, and the human-robot collaborative team is where we’re heading,” says John Lizzi, who heads GE’s research lab on distributed intelligent systems. “The technology is already disruptive today, and it will become more transformational in the next five to 10 years as machine perception improves.”

This week, Lizzi and his team convened a meeting of the world’s leading roboticists at GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York. Among those speaking were Rodney Brooks, the founder, chairman and CTO of Rethink Robotics; Chia-Peng Day, Foxconn’s robotics chief; and Red Whittaker, a prominent Carnegie Mellon University researcher who has been instrumental in putting robots to work in space, mines and automobiles. The summit’s goal was to focus engineers and thinkers on where industrial automation is going.

The term “industrial robots” conjures images of big and powerful arms installing windshields on automotive lines. These are mechanical brutes that found work because of their unwavering strength and ability to pick something up and put it back down in precisely the right spot every time. “For 40 years we’ve been making robot arms based on those of humans — just better, faster and stronger,” says Erik Nieves, the founder and CEO of startup PlusOne Robotics, who spoke at the summit. “But robots can be more than just better versions of the human arm.”

“Typically, robots are intimidating to people,” says GE’s Roland Menassa. “But people love these new collaborative robots because they can get close to them — the robot becomes a tool in their toolbox.”

These powerful machines are still integral to today’s manufacturing plants. But engineers see plenty of room for improvement. Robots are precise but limited, completing a very specific and narrow set of programmed actions to perform their work and demanding reprogramming from an expert if they need to do something new. They’re strong and quick, but blind to the world around them and bolted to the floor to remain stationary. They improve productivity, but are a danger to nearby humans so they must be penned in. Experts say the world needs a bit more brains to go along with robot brawn.

But advances in artificial intelligence and the decreasing cost and size of powerful processors and sensors are opening new horizons for robot capabilities.

The robotics team at GE Global Research are developing multi-robot teams that work together on various industrial tasks. Here, two robots work in tandem to perform field inspections. Image credit: GE Global Research

Roland Menassa, the leader of GE’s Advanced Manufacturing and Software Technology Center, says the revolution really got off the ground in 2011, when Rethink Robotics’ Baxter, the first commercially available collaborative robot, started working. Baxter was a machine with a friendly face whose swinging arms stopped as soon as they hit something unexpected. To reprogram it didn’t require a specialist, just a nearby employee who could show Baxter what to do by moving its arms along the path that they needed to go.

Menassa played a part in building Robonaut, the NASA humanoid robot that is currently vacuuming and pressing buttons aboard the International Space Station. He says Robots like Baxter are ushering in a new robotic future. “Typically, robots are intimidating to people,” he says. “But people love these new collaborative robots because they can get close to them — the robot becomes a tool in their toolbox.”

In his piece in Business Insider, Jeff Immelt, GE chairman and CEO, called for an end to the debate over whether we were in a tech bubble. “I believe that this is shortsighted and rooted in the belief that at some point the tech industry must undergo the same unfortunate ‘burst’ as in 2000,” Immelt wrote. “This line of thinking ignores the immense value that digital technologies have already created in the consumer world…more importantly, it neglects the value digital technologies will create in the industrial world over the next decade.”

With a billion-dollar investment in Predix, the cloud-based platform for the Industrial Internet, GE is quickly transforming into the world’s largest digital industrial company. Immelt said the bubble “line of thinking” failed to see the “the value digital technologies will create in the industrial world over the next decade – an estimated $8.6 trillion in productivity gains, more than two times the future value of the consumer Internet market.”

The story was also picked up by CNBC. Immelt will be talking about GE’s digital transformation during the Annual Outlook Investor Meeting held in New York on Dec. 16. Sign up for GE’s investor newsletter for more information.

If you ask Hollywood, the world teeming with robots and artificial intelligence is a no-brainer. Movies like “The Terminator,” “WALL-E” and “Blade Runner” have all cast intelligent automata as the wings upon which the future — mostly dystopian — swoops in. In fact, some very big names in science and engineering have recently joined voices in cautioning against unchecked intelligence development. Tesla’s Elon Musk and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking have both predicted catastrophe should we make dumb choices when building smart machines.

Of those sounding a much less ominous tone are many of the people actually working on the cutting edge of robotics. While progress needs to be carefully considered, they say, prognostications of malevolence overlook the very real benefits the machines have already started to produce. No matter what you believe on this subject, there’s no doubt that smart machines are firmly planted in the global zeitgeist these days.

“You’ve got people painting a very dark picture of robotics,” says John Lizzi, who heads GE’s research lab on distributed intelligent systems. “The concept of AI taking over is interesting, but getting anywhere near that type of capability is very far away. And while the rest of the world is dreaming up these science-fiction futures, we’re taking the technology and solving real problems today.”

Since the first robots started working on factory floors 55 years ago, a significant number of smart machines have come on the market and are now under development. In recent years, several have grabbed attention for how they promise to improve work and home life. These include Google’s self-driving cars as well as humble domestic helpers like iRobot’s Roomba. The still-unwritten future of the robots rising from the DARPA Robotics Challenge could one day potentially save lives after disasters.

“Transformation will come in the form of learning — when we can get the robots to start learning like children do, and we get their memory to be more episodic like humans,” says GE’s Brad Miller. GE is building aerial robotic inspection systems like this GE Guardian Air . They are combining the power of GE’s deep software and analytics and burgeoning drone technologies. Image credit: GE Global Research

But for the robotics revolution to come, as the IFR and industry insiders forecast, the machines will need to get smarter. In fact, experts in the field say that revolution is coming thanks to robots getting the brains to become collaborative — to perceive and respond to their environment, and to safely work side by side with their human colleagues.

For this idea to come to fruition — Rethink Robotic’s Baxter and Sawyer robots have already made important first steps — the machines will need to perform on their own, learn how to do new tasks by watching people and know when to ask for help. That’s going to require imbuing robots with artificial intelligence powerful enough to give them perception, reasoning and cognition. Just how much of these qualities they’ll need is still a hotly debated matter.

The most recent discussion is taking place this week at the 2015 Robotics Leadership Summit, sponsored by GE and held at the company’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York Among those speaking are Rodney Brooks, the founder, chairman and CTO of Rethink Robotics; Chia-Peng Day, Foxconn’s robotics chief; and Red Whittaker, a prominent Carnegie Mellon University researcher who has been instrumental in putting robots to work in space, mines and automobiles.

Top and above: Collaborative robots like Baxter are making important first steps. GIF credits: Rethink Robotics

Bradford Miller, a GE cognitive scientist developing more robust AI who spoke at the conference, says the current early generations of collaborative robots now in production, like Baxter, are likely to trigger an evolution in how we think about factories, but they don’t represent the really large breakthrough still on the horizon. “The really big thing is yet to come,” he says. “Transformation will come in the form of learning — when we can get the robots to start learning like children do, and we get their memory to be more episodic like humans, and we get their reasoning up to the point where it can be used to make inferences about things. It will be a disruptive change where human knowledge is transferable to a machine.”

Miller is a proponent of collaborative automation, one of the paths roboticists are taking to make machines think. They all involve improving hardware, artificial intelligence, power usage and machine communications with other machines and people through the Industrial Internet.

But the paths differ in how much cognition is enough to give the machines. Miller wants to see an industrial world populated by robots that he likens to those inhabiting the Star Wars movies — independently operating, thinking machines that learn the world as they experience it and work with their human counterparts in complete partnership.

A necessity in making this idea reality, though, is programming in an “ethical governor” to keep a learning robot in the service of its human creators. We need to “implement robots that understand the consequences of their actions,” Miller says.

““In the next three to four years, software will be writing software, and in five to eight years we’ll have industries that get totally disrupted by robots,” says GE’s Collin Parris. GE’s is developing robotic perception software that will extend to a variety of robotic systems such as the one picture above. Image credit: GE Global Research.

Others in the field are taking a different tack, one that seeks to give collaborative robots less of a contemplative bent. Erik Nieves, the founder and CEO of startup PlusOne Robotics, espouses what he calls a human-centric robot strategy that teams less thoughtful machines with human supervisors, allowing for the team to operate more effectively. This approach, he says, doesn’t seek to install fully formed mental states in robots. Instead, bots are primarily a way to augment and extend human abilities.

“As we move forward, yes, robots will need perception to respond to their environment,” Nieves says. “But it is unnecessary to wait until we replicate human cognition in order to further human-robot collaboration. AI robots are decades away. We can begin a much richer collaboration now. We don’t need smarter robots, we need robots connected to smart people. The goal is not to replace or replicate humans and thereby push them out of the equation. We need robots to enhance the effectiveness of humans.”

Nieves uses his own example. He lives in Texas and works in Ohio, but instead of relocating his family or leaving them for extended periods, he works through a telepresence robot. He guides the machine around from the comfort of his home. A screen on the bot with a live video stream beams his face into meetings and onto the factory floor. A camera lets him see what’s going on around the office. “What is needed is my expertise to solve real-time problems, not my physical presence,” he says. “The machine simply facilitates my capabilities remotely. The robot didn’t need to be smart to be useful.”

It’s likely that the future won’t be one path or the other. Rather, it will be a mix where we deploy robots with vastly different capabilities to do the work we need done. Either way, the people building the algorithms and hardware say they are excited about the possibilities they see for how robots can help humanity work smarter and live better.

“The intelligence of robots is increasing, and they’re becoming more connected to each other and to humans,” says Colin Parris, the vice president of software research at GE. “In the next three to four years, software will be writing software, and in five to eight years we’ll have industries that get totally disrupted by robots.”

Businesses can do more with less and find a sustainable path to growth by following the principles of frugal innovation.

Heads of state from around the world have gathered in Paris with a lofty goal — no less than saving the world. While political leaders seek an international agreement to keep global warming from threatening human existence, business leaders are confronted with their own challenge: how to achieve a sustainable model for growth.

The challenge for companies — especially manufacturers — is not only to make their output less polluting, but also find a way to use fewer resources as input. Indeed, at our current rates of consumption, by 2030 we would require two planets to supply the resources we need and to absorb our waste. With 3 billion people joining the global middle class over the next 20 years, demand for resources like energy, food, water and materials is set to explode. This looming resource scarcity will threaten the viability of many businesses.

The only way companies can reduce their emissions and overcome resource scarcity is by building a sustainable growth engine that consumes fewer resources and yet generates more economic value in an eco-friendly way. Long-wedded to a wasteful “more for more” growth model, it is time for firms to learn to “do more — and better — with less.” Frugal innovation can show them the way.

Frugal innovation is a game-changing growth strategy fit for a low-carbon economy, enabling companies to simultaneously generate more business and societal value while also minimizing environmental impact. Frugal innovation applies to what a company does (its products and services) as well as how it does business (its operations and business model). In our book, we profile over 40 visionary companies across industries that are using the principles of frugal innovation to radically reinvent their market offerings and the way they operate. These pioneers are channeling their innovation energy into three key areas:

Frugal R&D. Seventy percent of a product’s lifecycle costs and environmental footprint is determined during its R&D phase. Hence, frugal innovators design products to be simpler and lighter so they can not only be energy efficient but also deliver better quality. For instance, GE Healthcare has developed portable, battery-powered ECG devices such as the MAC 600 that can be used for hours with a single charge and enable doctors to test more patients in less time. Similarly, when designing new buildings — which, in the U.S. alone, account for 50 percent of all energy consumed and almost half of all emissions — architects can use digital tools like Tally to choose eco-friendly materials that could drastically reduce use of energy and water and greenhouse gases over the entire lifecycle of a building.

Frugal supply chains. Far-sighted companies are investing in next-generation “clean” manufacturing processes and technologies in an attempt to produce better-quality goods using fewer resources. For example, in partnership with MIT, pharmaceutical giant Novartis is piloting a “continuous manufacturing process” — a breakthrough technique that enables drugs to be produced in a continuous flow in a small, fully integrated facility no bigger than a container. Compared to large plants, this micro-factory can produce pills 10 times faster, reduce CAPEX and OPEX by up to 50 percent, decrease use of natural resources and cut emissions by up to 90 percent.

Frugal business models. A few audacious firms are setting the bar higher for sustainability by reinventing their entire business model and overhauling all their operations in order to systematically do more — and better — with less. Consumer goods giant Unilever intends to double its revenues while halving all its products’ greenhouse gas impact by 2020. In addition to reducing energy and water consumption and cutting emissions in its global supply chain, Unilever is also investing in frugal solutions that have a direct positive impact on the environment. For instance, Unilever’s new French headquarters near Paris is France’s largest “positive-energy building” the 4,000 m² of solar rooftop panels enable the building to produce more energy than it consumes, offsetting the power consumption of 130 households per year. Having already achieved zero waste to landfill (by reusing waste) and saved 1 million tons of CO2 since 2008, Unilever is now sharing its frugal solutions with other companies to help them reduce their own emissions.

To help in the fight against climate change, firms across industries need a radically new business strategy that reconciles profitability and sustainability. By enshrining frugality into their products, services, supply chains, and even business models, companies can gradually adopt a “low-carbon mindset” that will enable them to systematically create more economic and social value using fewer resources.

(Top image: Getty Images)

Navi Radjou is an innovation advisor based in Silicon Valley. A TED speaker and recipient of the 2013 Thinkers50 Innovation Award, he is coauthor of Frugal Innovation: How To Do More With Less, published by The Economist in 2015.

All views expressed are those of the author.

In the 1950s, GE hired renowned comics artists, including George “Inky” Roussos of Batman fame, to draw a series of comic books called Adventures in Science. “In the public relations field, although were all aware of the adult fear that comic books were producing a crop of juvenile delinquents, we couldn’t escape the conclusion that the medium had attractive possibilities for mass communications,“ said a 1953 story published in General Electric Review, an in-house GE newspaper.

The series covered everything from space travel to electricity and the idea was to get kids hooked on science and turn them into engineers. Judging by the latest GE gas turbines and jet engines connected to the cloud, the plan delivered with dividends. In fact, today’s engineers are making Adventures into the Future from the 1950s look positively antiquated. Take a look.

Over the next decade, the global population is expected to grow by 1 billion people to more than 8 billion, and everyone will need electricity. GE expects demand for power to grow 50 percent over the next 20 years, by an additional 3,000 gigawatts (GW) of power-generation capacity.

Getting there will require some creative engineering — both reimagining the usual suspects like turbines and generators as well as deploying new cloud-based digital tools and data analytics. GE has a few ideas.

Soon, the company says, every plant can become a connected, high-tech hub where plant operators will use insights from data pooled in “data lakes” and stored in the cloud to help make better decisions to keep power flowing and lower the cost of power generation. The company has invested over $1 billion to develop Predix, a cloud-based platform for the Industrial Internet. It will serve as the digital backbone of the power plant of the future, allowing operators to write apps and drill into data for insights needed for more efficient operations. GE’s November acquisition of France-based Alstom’s power and grid business also gave GE the capability to deliver an integrated power plant system.

The power plant of the future will stand on two key pillars: the digital power plant and the modular power island, which GE calls AdvantEDGE (see infographic at the bottom of the story). GE’s modular power island design helps significantly simplify the construction of power plants, as pre-fabricated and pre-commissioned modules are delivered to site. That helps reduce the amount of manpower needed on site and helps accelerate the construction time. The digital power plant then brings the modules to higher efficiency. The end result is power plants that cost less to build and generate more, affordable power.

GE introduced the digital power plant at the Minds + Machines conference in San Francisco in September. The company was able to finish the modular power island design with technology it acquired from Alstom this fall. It brought the technology this week to Power-Gen International, the world’s largest energy-generation conference, held every year. “The reason why we can provide this modular power island is that we now have all of the core components in-house,” says Flor Rivas, senior product manager for combined-cycle power plants at GE Power.

The system works like a giant set of industrial building blocks. GE first builds and commissions modules for scope like the ejector system, pipe racks and blowdown tanks. It then ships those prefabricated units to the worksite for assembly. “This new approach will allow GE to deliver the plant in a simplified way,” says Andreas Brautsch, general manager of product management for Integrated Systems. “The modular power island cuts the time needed to build a plant by 25 percent and doesn’t require a huge amounts of highly sophisticated site engineers, which can be expensive and difficult to secure, for the erection of the plant.”

The other half of the power plant of the future is the digital power plant — adding software to power generation that, Rivas says, “will redefine the way customers operate their power plants.” Rivas says that sensors on equipment will constantly collect data about how well each component is working and send it to the cloud. Apps then analyze that data and provide engineers with crucial operational insights such as which parts to replace, which to fix and how to best maintain equipment to limit outages. It also helps them run plants more efficiently.

The data will also allow GE to build a “digital twin” of the entire plant in the cloud and run analytics and test scenarios before applying them in the real world. “With Alstom, we can be more accurate,” says Aaron Zurborg, portfolio architect for software solutions. “In fact, we can provide even greater accuracy across the entire generation fleet. From renewables, coal, nuclear and gas, we’re producing models that we can count on.”

But the technology will go beyond that and collect data from many plants. “With the digital power plant, you can run models and analytics for one plant and expand it across your portfolio,” Zurborg says.

Zurborg estimates that the digital power plant could deliver as much as $50 million in savings for existing combined-cycle gas-powered plants, which pair gas turbines with steam turbines, and up to $230 million in savings for a new plant. He says the digital power plant can be available for every kind of existing plant, even those that don’t run on GE equipment. Says Zurborg: “The world needs more power and we have a great way to get it done.”

When Joe Salvo bought his house in Schenectady, NY, in 1986 he purchased a piece of history. GE built it in 1905, not long after Thomas Edison and his compatriots opened the company’s labs and moved manufacturing plants to the city. It was intended to be the model electric home of the future: light bulbs in every room, sewing machines, a toaster, an electric stove and an electric water heater.

Now that the future is here, Salvo is hardly ever home. As GE’s director of the Industrial Internet Consortium (ICC) – a not-for-profit group seeking to bridge the physical and digital industrial worlds – he’s too busy building the “new” future and telling the world about it. “I actually come from the future,” he jokes over the phone from Shanghai, where he was recently speaking. “I’m paid by GE to work in the future and create the things that are going to be transformational.”

He’s only half kidding. In his office at GE Global Research in the Schenectady suburb of Niskayuna, Salvo has a 2015 version of Teddy Roosevelt’s 1905 electric toaster: a dedicated 100-GB-per-second line (compared to regular broadband speeds of 25 megabits per second) that he can expand to a bandwidth of many terabytes per second in preparation of the data flood that will soon arrive.

Above: Thousands of sensors placed on this 9HA GE gas turbine produce nearly 5 terabytes of data, about half the content of the print collection of the U.S. Library of Congress. Image credit: GE Power & Water

Salvo is one of the engineers laying the foundations of the Industrial Internet. For all of its blessings, the regular Internet — the one that allows you to read the paper and watch Game of Thrones online — still has problems, foremost among them, security.

The Industrial Internet, a network that connects machines with each other and the cloud for analysis and then dispatches relevant results to human operators, is a different beast. “This is the network where we are going to put the machines that our lives depend on,” Salvo says.

Companies are constantly looking for ways to make smarter decisions. But that’s getting harder without good data. The Industrial Internet will carry all manner of performance data about heat, noise, and vibrations from sensors attached to all kinds of machines including jet engines, locomotives and oil rigs. It can also connect help optimize entire hospitals, factories and power plants.

“We are moving into a systems age, where complex machines become self-aware and will start to make decisions among themselves,” says GE’s Joe Salvo. “If we’re lucky, they will teach us a thing or two.”

Salvo says that thanks to Moore’s law, which states that computing power will double every two years, and Metcalfe’s law – the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users – “we now have both the computing power and memory that is required to make really intelligent machines and then connect them to a network.”

“We are moving into a systems age, where complex machines become self-aware and will start to make decisions among themselves,” Salvo says. “If we’re lucky, they will teach us a thing or two.”

This is vintage Salvo. He helped establish the IIC last year. Along with GE, Salvo signed up four other companies as co-founders – Intel, Cisco, AT&T and IBM – and convinced each company to pay an annual fee of $250,000 to kick-start the funding the group needed. The IIC now includes more than 215 members from 24 countries. They include universities and research institutions as well as telecoms and industrial businesses.

In 1905, GE built in Schenectady the electric house of the future. Joe Salvo, who bought the house in 1986, is now building GE’s new digital industrial future. Image credits: Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady

Salvo says the IIC’s job is to make sure the Industrial Internet will be built on an open architecture where everything is interoperable. This will be important in a future where there will be as many as 50 billion devices connected by 2020 to the Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things.

One such piece of architecture is GE’s cloud-based software platform for the Industrial Internet called Predix. GE has been using the platform internally and in September opened it to outside developers.

Salvo says that GE’s founder would have understood his vision. “Edison based our company on the concept that you build a network and you add all kinds of interesting devices to it that will change the way we live — things like voice recordings, movies, washing machines, stoves and electric motors,” Salvo says. “GE has taken advantage of that network thinking for over 100 years, and the Industrial Internet is the logical extension of that.”

A century ago this November, Albert Einstein published 10 equations that rocked the foundations of physics and changed how we view the universe. Einstein’s general theory of relativity upended our intuitive understanding of space and time and redrew the Cosmos as a funhouse where two parallel lines can intersect and time can run at different speeds. “Einstein’s theory, and the intervening century of experimentation, provided a way to satisfy one of the most fundamental yearnings: to understand what is out there in the universe, how it all began and humanity’s place in it,” The Economist wrote on the anniversary.

But it wasn’t always obvious that he would sit in the pantheon of great geniuses. When Einstein visited GE in 1921, the GE-produced newspaper Schenectady Works News described him as the “noted German scientist who has the world guessing with his theory of relativity.” Even when Einstein received his Nobel Prize in physics later the same year, it wasn’t for relativity but for explaining the photoelectric effect.

Einstein outside the RCA broadcast center in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Einstein and Steinmetz (in white suit) stand in the center. GE’s Irving Langmuir is third to the right from Steinmetz. In 1932, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work that led to early coronary artery imaging. All images credit: Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady

Einstein, Steinmetz and their entourage of more than a dozen scientists and executives then toured a high-power transoceanic radio station in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It was operated by the Radio Corporation of America, which was co-founded by GE and featured a high-frequency alternator designed by GE engineer Ernst Alexanderson in 1918.

The machine was so powerful that the U.S. military took charge of it during World War I. American commanders used it to communicate with their allies and the American Expeditionary Forces in France. “It became a vital national security tool, especially after failures in the transatlantic cables,” says Chris Hunter, a historian at the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady.

Einstein reportedly “expressed great surprise and interest at the high perfection” of American radio development. “To demonstrate the efficiency of radio communication, Prof. Einstein was asked to send a message to the station at Nauen, Germany,” the Works News wrote. “He did and in exactly six minutes received the following reply: Many thanks and reciprocations. Most hearty greetings to the great German scientist. Officer in charge POZ.”

The moment endures in a classic photograph of the scientists, including Einstein, Steinmetz and GE researcher and Nobel Prize winner Irving Langmuir, standing in front of the RCA radio station.

The Alexanderson high frequency alternator at the New Brunswick radio station during military inspection. The machine,  developed by GE engineer Ernst Alexanderson, was a valuable communication tool during World War I. Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady

GE engineer Charles Steinmetz at his Wendell Av. home laboratory in Schenectady, New York. When he died suddenly in 1923, then Secretary of Commerce and future U.S. President Herbert Hoover wrote that “his mathematical reasoning broke the path for many of the advances in electrical engineering in recent years and solved problems that were vital to the progress of the industry.” Steinmetz also was the first person to create artificial lightning. A friend described the creative freedom Steinmetz enjoyed at GE to the writer of the engineer’s New York Times obituary: “He was allowed to try to generate electricity out of the square root of minus one.” Image credit: Museum of Innovation and Science Schenectady