Technology & Innovation

Much like its founder, Thomas Edison, GE has always been motivated by the belief that technology and innovation can make dramatic contributions to solving the world’s most challenging problems. This commitment remains central to GE’s public policy engagement. GE’s history of innovation — from the lightbulb to jet engines — has demonstrated the power of innovation to fulfill the core public policy objective of improving standards of living. Today, our ecomagination and healthymagination business initiatives reflect our commitment to applying innovation to address the critical challenges our world faces in the areas of energy, the environment and healthcare.

GE believes the relationship between public policy and technological innovation is symbiotic. Just as innovation can address public policy challenges, so too can appropriate public policies help spur technology and innovation. To that end, we seek to encourage consideration of technology- and innovation-friendly public policies.

Specific areas of focus include:

• Support for robust intellectual property rights (IPR) protections that are critical to creating and preserving the incentives for innovation. Key elements include the adoption of legal regimes, as well as capacity-building to assist countries in developing the structures and know-how necessary to implement such regimes.
• Support for policies that promote the development of clean and efficient energy. Key elements include support for policies that appropriately price carbon emissions, the elimination of barriers to trade in energy and environmental goods and services, and tax and other fiscal incentives for the adoption of clean energy solutions.
• Support for policies that effectively address the three key challenges facing healthcare globally: enhancing access, reducing cost and improving quality.
• Support for policies that would create incentives for industry to reuse more water and regulations that would better protect scarce water resources.
• Advocacy for effective reform of trade control systems to make such controls more efficient, transparent and predictable.
• Support for education, health, social safety net, immigration and tax policies that strengthen a country’s capability to promote technological innovation.