...the next secular bull market will be based on some combination of materials science, advanced manufacturing and nanotechnology...From MIT's Technology Review:
General Electric’s CEO explains his company’s recent bets on 3-D printing and software
There are lots of ideas that pass for interesting and important in Silicon Valley (‘Hey, I’m building a social network for pets!”). Manufacturing technologies aren’t usually on the list.See also:
General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt thinks that’s going to change. Next year, Immelt predicted as he addressed a software and dotcom-heavy crowd at a conference GE hosted San Francisco today, “is a time when manufacturing becomes sexy again.”
GE, which did $142 billion in business last year selling engines, turbines, and hospital equipment, has been closely tracking advances that are happening in 3-D printing and additive manufacturing, even developing a way to make fuel injectors for its jet engines through an experimental laser printing process. This month, its aviation business acquired two additive-manufacturing companies that had previously been making parts for GE’s LEAP engines.
GE’s goal, Immelt said, is to starting cutting its production cycle times and costs in half. “Making a turbine blade fundamentally hasn’t changed for 25 or 30 years,” he said.
Immelt was joined by other GE executives in San Francisco to lay out another of GE’s investing visions—what the company is calling the “industrial Internet” (see “GE Pitches an Industrial Internet”), a $1.5 billion effort to create better data analytics software and new kinds of user interactivity for GE’s equipment...MORE
"General Electric Pitches an Industrial Internet" (GE)
Cool Stuff At General Electric Research and Development: Batteries; LED's; Grid (GE; AONE; CREE; RMBS)
Q&A: Mark Little, Head of GE Global Research- "GE is pushing the smart grid and thin-film solar, but don't expect new kinds of nuclear reactors. "
"Can R&D Save General Electric?" and "GE's Risky Energy Research" (GE)
Department of Energy Gives General Electric Grant to Develop At-home Fueling for Natural Gas Cars (GE; GTLS)
"Immelt Stakes General Electric's Growth on Higher R&D as NBC, Finance Shrink" (GE)
General Electric to Offer $200 Million Smart Grid Prize (along with Kleiner, Perkins; Rockport Capital; Foundation Cap...) GE
