Companies and Brands

General Electric

Industrials

General Electric was an American industrial conglomerate and one of the most influential corporations of the twentieth century, formed in 1892 through the merger of Thomas Edison's Edison General Electric Company with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, a consolidation arranged by the financier J. P. Morgan. Over its history the company built businesses in electric power, lighting, aviation, medical imaging, appliances and finance, and for decades owned the NBC television network, before selling off many of its divisions in the years following the Great Recession.

Facts

Company Type

Industrial and technology conglomerate (dissolved 2024, split into GE Aerospace, GE HealthCare and GE Vernova) 1

Founded Year

1892 1

Headquarters

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. (final headquarters; earlier Fairfield, Connecticut and Schenectady, New York) 1

Company Type

Company Type (category)

Public 1

General Electric

1 entry

Event Type

Event Year

Industry Context

Practice Discipline

General Electric Breakup

General Electric

FAQs

What happened to General Electric as a conglomerate?

It was broken up into GE Aerospace, GE HealthCare and GE Vernova between 2023 and 2024.

In November 2021 General Electric's chief executive, Larry Culp, announced that the company would be broken up into three separate public companies by 2024. GE HealthCare was spun off in January 2023, and GE Vernova, the energy company, was created when the split was finalized in April 2024. GE Aerospace is the legal successor and took the General Electric name and ticker symbols, so the old conglomerate ceased to exist.

Connections

Associated With

GE-McKinsey Matrix

The client the matrix was built for in the 1970s, distinct from McKinsey which designed it.

General Electric Breakup

Source Wikipedia, General Electric 2021 Breakup

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Kanter's research on corporate entrepreneurship and innovation, including her influential book The Change Masters, drew on case studies at large corporations including General Electric.

Source Rosabeth Moss Kanter (Wikipedia)

Six Sigma

General Electric, under Jack Welch starting in 1995, is the company most credited with popularizing and scaling Six Sigma industry-wide, distinct from its Motorola origin.

Operates In

Weapons Industry

Source Wikidata: General Electric

Parent Company Of

RCA Corporation

Source Wikipedia: RCA Corporation

Related Corporate Events

General Electric Breakup

Source Wikipedia, General Electric 2021 Breakup

In the Other Atlases

Developed

GE-600 series

Also in Computing Atlas: developed by this subject.

Multics

Also in Computing Atlas: developed by this subject.

Boiling Water Reactor

Also in Energy Atlas: developed by this subject.