GE’s new GEnx jet engine is currently on “virtual” display in New York’s DUMBO neighborhood via a revolutionary hologram display. It’s all a part of Creative Week New York and is open to the public all week.

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Companies are increasingly using social media as a tactic for corporate social responsibility and sustainability communications.

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As part of its efforts to become the greenest brewer in the world, Heineken is taking a broader look at the ways to make beer packaging more sustainable. In what seems to become a common practice lately, Heineken doesn’t leave the challenge only to its R&D people, but invites everyone to give it a try on Ideas Brewery, an open-innovation platform, offering $10,000 to the best idea. Is the company’s American Idol style of crowdsourcing a better way to generate new ideas or just a marketing gimmick?

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Unilever has a vision of a better future for our world and its business and it needs your help to make it happen. The company unveiled a new Open Innovation website to gather and assess ideas from external resources, inviting “anyone who has a fresh, serious approach to new thinking” to pitch in. What do you get in return? The opportunity to make a difference to millions of people’s lives and a financial reward if Unilever decides to pursue your idea. Some would say it’s a great way to generate the sort of innovation Unilever needs to meet the ambitious goals it set in its Sustainable Living Plan. Others would argue it’s a waste of time and the company should look inside and not outside for solutions. So which one is it? Or in other words, can crowdsourcing really work for Unilever?

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Both GE’s size and scope of its manufacturing have grown exponentially beyond the company’s manufacturing plant expansion in Schenectady, New York 110 years ago. Beyond the size of its manufacturing facilities across the globe, the company has had an enormous impact on just about every manufactured item we can see or touch today.

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This week GE announced that it bought a 51 percent stake in a $375 million wind farm north of Oklahoma City.

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For almost half a century GE has been on the front lines of cancer research, combining technology and a culture innovation to fight against cancer.

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Just kidding!  Happy April Fools 2012 :-) American corporate icon General Electric (NYSE: GE) said this week it plans to donate and distribute 1,000 eco-efficient black and day-glo lights at this year’s annual Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. The surprise donation was announced at a press conference March 30 by GE chairman [...]

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In 1905 GE established its financial services business with the launch of a small utility finance company. Now as we face an uncertain 21st century, GE is now a global green business financier.

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Saudi Arabia is an interesting country when it comes to energy. First of all, they have more oil than anyone else. They also get a huge amount of solar energy, approximately 2200 kWh per square meter. At the same time, they have tremendous energy demands, both for air conditioning and desalination. It is, after all, not an inherently hospitable environment. Until quite recently, they mostly used oil to generate electricity, since it was so plentiful and cheap there. But, given that oil production has now peaked and with the price of oil going up now, along with increased demand, they are looking in to other alternatives.

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Since the 1970s, GE innovation has improved curing and the quality of health care, from cancer to strokes. Now GE leads with its attention paid to women’s health care.

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GE’s interest in solar energy began during the space age and over 50 years later, has an impact on everything from transportation to modern electricity grids.

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In this excerpt, we examine 5 human needs – health, wealth, earth, equality and trust – that have potential to generate high growth of top-line revenue and innovative leadership in billion-person markets.

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Second in our GE Technology for Good Series, Leon Kaye explores the company’s long journey from incandescent light bulbs to LED technologies that push the bounds of innovation.

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This is the first in a series of Technology for Good: A Historical Perspective From GE. We start with the toaster, which for over 100 years has been a driver of GE’s innovation. After Thomas Edison spent several years developing a wire that could heat without melting in the open air, GE’s first electric toaster was released to market in 1905.

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The Environmental Defense Fund has been working with GE on Treasure Hunts, an approach to employee engagement that’s been proven to provide a significant return while also creating opportunities for employees to gain a stake in sustainability efforts.

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Now, there is a new investment approach—one that seeks bigger profits that capitalists pursue while building a better world that do-gooders desire. The goal is to generate human impact and profit, or “HIP,” simultaneously. HIP embraces a comprehensive view of society. HIP encourages for-profit companies to solve human problems, generating new customers, fulfilling employees, and serving society.

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Jeffrey Hollender’s talk on Tuesday at NYU wasn’t probably listed on Time Out NY, but nevertheless it was one of the best shows the city provided that night. Hollender, an almost impossible combination of a CEO and a rebel, is never boring no matter how many times you get to hear him. Combining gloomy economic and social observations with funny anecdotes, he managed to charm the dozens of students that packed the room, sending them home afterwards with his innovative ideas (some would say ‘European’) on how to get the U.S. economy back on the track towards a sustainable future.

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The concept of the smart city is one that holds a lot of promise and potential in terms of how computerized, networked public infrastructure might improve energy efficiency, resource management, and the overall quality of life in cities. Cisco created an interactive infographic showcasing its smart, connected City of the Future. The company also recently announced the addition of a whole new suite of technologies and services that are aimed at helping utilities modernize their grids.

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It’s that time of year again – when global thought leaders and politicians descend upon the desert emirate of Abu Dhabi to discuss the future of energy and all that relates to it. The World Future Energy Summit begins tomorrow and I’ll be here to cover it. This year’s theme ‘Powering Sustainable Innovation,’ will manifest [...]

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A few weeks back we ran a piece about how UPS was using advanced logistics to reduce energy consumption and emissions while cutting costs at the same time. This is done by calculating optimum routes and traveling the minimum distances. If this works well with 10-ton delivery trucks that are rolling around on wheels, imagine [...]

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Back in May, I wrote about GE’s new FlexEfficiency 50 power generation technology. This groundbreaking system really extends the state of the art with a high efficiency combined-cycle gas turbine system that has breakthrough efficiency and agility. The agility, which is the ability of the system to quickly respond to changes in demand, makes it [...]

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Water crises from Texas to Australia have hit commodity supplies. Changes in the world’s weather patterns now affect corporate profits across various industries.

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Innovators in clean energy and healthcare may have an angel in GE. And it doesn’t stop with seed money.

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GE’s 2010 Corporate Citizenship  Report makes the following statement early on: “GE businesses depend on the infrastructure, skills and institutions of stable, prosperous societies and healthy environments. To succeed as a global business, we need to be a part of building these societies where we operate. We do this through the products and services we [...]

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Multinational brewing giant AB InBev and GE are teaming up to find ways of increasing energy efficiency, conserving water and reducing CO2 emissions at the brewer’s facilities throughout China. The partnership with GE will help AB InBev realize its goal of reducing CO2 emissions by some 100,000 tons per year, along with making additional significant cuts in water and energy consumption.

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What do you do with a refrigerator once it reaches the end of its life?  Well, in our parents’ and grandparents’ day, appliances were repaired and repaired until they were completely unusable.  In London, heaps of unwanted refrigerators were transformed into a theater installation.  Some utilities pay a few bucks to take those old fridges [...]

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In another stunning reversal, our American government appears to have taken another step away from its sworn duty to protect the American people in its continuing effort to better serve the corporate interests that are paying for their political campaigns. Last week, the US EPA announced that exhaust streams from coal-fired power plants injected underground [...]

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In a clear case of high bar-setting, earlier this year the U.S. Department of Energy kicked off its National Clean Fleets Partnership with a select group of official partners: AT&T, FedEx, PepsiCo, UPS and Verizon. The program aims to reduce diesel and gasoline pollution from fleet vehicles, and with these global A-listers on board others [...]

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A full-page ad in The Washington Post states in big letters, “Natural gas is hot stuff.” A bit of irony if I’ve ever seen one. The smaller print of the ad extols the virtues of natural gas, including its abundance in the U.S. and the energy independence its use will bring. “Natural gas consists mainly [...]

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