All Systems Go

How General Electric's jet-engine division in Ohio is boosting the company's business in China. A case study in advanced global strategy

Fast Company, April 11, 2008 — More than a billion people were watching late last year when the first commercial airliner ever built by a Chinese firm rolled off the assembly line in Shanghai. China's state network, CCTV, broadcast it live, a proud symbol of the country's rising technical prowess. Yet if you looked closely, there was another peacock preening. Of the 19 suppliers that collaborated on the 90-passenger regional jet, only one had its logo on the plane: General Electric, which built the engine. No surprise, perhaps, that GE subsidiary CNBC was the only foreign network permitted to cover the event.

There is no company on the globe that's better at leveraging the multiple parts of its business to feed growth than GE.