I attended the live production of CEO Exchange last Thursday with a friend a mine from Timken. The round-table session consisted of GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt and Kraft’s CEO Irene Rosenfeld with host Jeff Greenfield. Jeff Immelt spoke of major initiatives GE has focused heavily on since he took the reigns in 2001. From the ecomagination campaign that was launched in 2005 to positioning NBC to be more compelling and monetizing the digital content space. The major shift under Immelt is R&D spending and globalization of GE being less dependent on the US.
Irene Rosenfeld explained Kraft’s focus on healthier foods (growing trend) that tastes delicious. She feels Kraft’s technological experience in food categories and development is positioned very well to meet the every changing and multi-cultural consumer.
The show format itself was very interesting and reminded me of a pilot I helped develop with several producers at Scout in 2001/02 called Vision to Value. Entrepreneurial success stories.
