2014, GE Appliances launched FirstBuild to augment the strengths of a long-established company with those of an entrepreneurial start-up.
Separation is the key. As a free-standing enterprise operating under its own brand, FirstBuild is decidedly not another attempt to transform a traditional company’s corporate culture.
The FirstBuild facility is located on the University of Louisville campus, in Kentucky, a few miles but a world away from GE Park. There, an open community of industrial designers, scientists, engineers, students and amateur tinkerers work alongside FirstBuild employees to design, produce and sell innovative home appliances.
FirstBuild can invent and rapidly prototype, manufacture and commercialize new products. The FirstBuild community does everything, from product concept through design, engineering, manufacturing and sales on a micro scale.
The focus is a new generation of smart appliances. A prime example is ChillHub, a refrigerator FirstBuild conceived and built to provide aspiring inventors with “a platform of possibilities”, ChillHub has two USB that boast four ports each, plus integrated Wi-fi. FirstBuild inventors are now working on smart features such as autofill water pitchers, deodorizers and bacteria sensors—and even devices that can alert you when you’re running out of milk.
Other smart appliance innovations coming out of FirstBuild include a cooktop with a Bluetooth-connected temperature probe, a smart wine chiller and a talking washer/dryer that can speak English or Spanish to help the visually impaired select the correct cycle.
With a community that now numbers more than 12,000 members, FirstBuild gives GE Appliances access to a limitless range of innovative thinking, while FirstBuild’s own microbusiness allows it to move with entrepreneurial speed. FirstBuild revenues and profit margins are on track to make it a fully self-funded enterprise in 2018.
Plans are even underway to replicate FirstBuild in Shanghai, where the community will focus on innovating “Internet of Things” devices.
Bharat Kapoor is a principal in the Chicago office of A.T. Kearney. Kevin Nola is the president and CEO of GE Appliances. Natarajan “Venkat” Venkatakrishnan, the director of advanced technologies at GE Appliances, was CEO of FirstBuild from 2013 to 2016.