Book dossier

Imagine it forward

by Beth Comstock

"Beth Comstock, the former Vice Chair and Chief Marketing Officer at GE, and their long-time head of business innovation and change initiatives, tackles the one issue that keeps managers, executives and leaders up at night at every corporation in America and throughout the world--how to stay nimble, adapt faster and constantly evolve in the face of almost daily change and disruption. In Imagine It Forward, Beth Comstock, the former Vice Chair of GE, describes her twenty-five year efforts to be an instigator of change at every level of business. When she first moved from NBC to parent company GE in 1998, she was ignored as a woman in a man's world, treated as an outsider because she didn't have a business background, and ignored as a mere PR person. But CEO Jeff Immelt realized even then that the industrial giant, like so many businesses, had to change fast in order to stay relevant in a world where Google and later Facebook and an explosion of internet companies were transforming how goods and services were marketed, made, and sold. In a deeply personal journey filled with practical takeaways from two plus decades of initiating change at the top levels of corporate America--from the Ecomagination initiative that transformed the way GE worked with their customers, to the company's famed FastWorks methodology designed to bring new products more quickly to market--Comstock lays out the challenges, opportunities, tools and practices needed to embrace change, whatever industry you are in, and make it part of every management decision"--