As we described in our story on Monday about the launch of the first Healthymagination Annual Report, innovation is at the heart of the initiative, which was launched last May. One of the ways it can be seen in action is in what GE calls “Reverse Innovation,” which is our approach to developing technologies in emerging markets, for emerging markets — and then finding new outlets for these less expensive, often-miniaturized technologies in developed economies. How the strategy is being played out in India is the subject of a detailed report this week, “‘Reverse Innovation’: GE Makes India a Lab for Global Markets,” published in The Wharton School’s highly regarded online business journal.
 Hey, baby: A technician at our Global Research Center in Bangalore is seen here working with GE’s Lullaby Infant Warmer technology. The giant GE Healthcare lab at the research center in India, which houses all of GE’s Healthcare products, is “not a sales and marketing demo room,” GE’s Ashish Shah, general manager of global technology, tells the journal. “It is an engineering lab for our engineers to work hands-on.” |
As John Dineen, president and CEO of GE Healthcare, told Wharton about one of the imaging systems being made in India: “It is about creating new markets. Over time, this product will morph and get more specialized for the unique needs and characteristics of this market. The innovations from here could lead to an entirely new line of products which in turn could create whole new market opportunities for us.”
Despite GE’s long presence in India, Wharton notes that GE wasn’t meeting its potential when it came to the immense size of the country’s market. As V. Raja, president and CEO of GE Healthcare-South Asia, told the journal: “We realized that the biggest impediment was that we were selling what we were making [rather than] making what the customers here needed. It was clear that if we had to grow here we had to shift gears and align our products to the needs of the customers.”
Wharton goes on to cite Vijay Govindarajan, a professor of international business at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, who is familiar to GE Reports readers from our stories on Reverse Innovation. VG, as he is known, told the editors: “Historically, innovations have always happened in rich countries. But in the future, innovations will have to take place in countries like India and China, because this is where the bulk of the customers are. The needs are more pressing here and the sheer volumes will justify the investments that will be required for developing the appropriate products.”
GE’s Ashish Shah cited the example of GE Healthcare’s new portable electrocardiograms, which are lightweight and easy to use, but “incorporate the analysis program that is standard in GE’s more high-end ECG devices,” as a way in which innovations are born, but without sacrificing quality, the journal notes. “Other products that GE Healthcare has developed over the last few years for the Indian market,” the editors observe, “include baby warmers and X-ray and ultrasound systems.” As Dr. Devi Shetty, a Bangalore-based cardiac surgeon who is also on the Healthymagination Board of Directors, told the editors, products that come from Reverse Innovation “can definitely change the rules of the game.”
* Read The Wharton School’s full story
* Read more healthymagination stories on GE Reports
Learn more in these GE Reports stories:
“Innovation engine: Inside healthymagination’s report”
“Reverse Innovation hits Harvard’s most influential list”
“Reverse innovation: Building GE’s local growth model”
“Reverse innovation: How GE is disrupting itself”