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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages ofInc.andFast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you cansign up to get it yourselfevery Monday morning. Before there was Apple, Medtronic, or Tesla, there was General Electric (GE). Created in 1892 from the combination of Thomas Edisons Edison General Electric and two other competitors, the American conglomerate was once the most powerful, valuable, and inventive company in the world. At different times during its 130-year run, [GE] had been a leader in technological innovation and entrepreneurial drive, writes Puck cofounder William D. Cohan in his 2022 book Power Failure. The generation and distribution of electricity? GE. The light bulb? GE. The jet engine? GE. The X-ray machine? GE. The worlds first radio broadcast? GE. The first home television sets? GE. The first electric cars? GE. Cohans book goes on to detail the management misstepsmany related to its GE Capital financial services businessthat ultimately led the once mighty company to split into three public companies specializing in aviation, healthcare, and energy. The power behind the name Scott Strazik, CEO of energy spinoff GE Vernova, says he is trying to lead the company by adopting some of the best parts of the GE legacyits ambition and some its best talentwhile embracing the freedoms of being a standalone company. We were very thoughtful about the fact that we needed to have an entrepreneurial edge to everything that we did, he says. That edginess starts with the companys name: Vernova marries ver (short for verdant, or green) with nova, from the Latin word novus, or new. In contrast, the other GE spinoffs, GE HealthCare and GE Aerospace, selected more straightforward names based on the industries they serve. We wanted to choose a name that very clearly said to all of our stakeholders that the world is changing, and we needed to change with it, Strazik says. One of those stakeholder groups is the community of cleantech and energy transition startups, and Strazik is trying to forge partnerships with them. Last year, GE Vernova launched a joint venture with Montana Technologies, the maker of a system that harvests water from the atmosphere, and it invested in Form Energy, which develops energy storage solutions. The greatest value we add for [Form Energy CEO] Mateo Jaramillo isnt going to be the money we invest, Strazik says. It can be the supply-chain team I had at his factory in West Virginia last week or the commercial leader thats meeting with his commercial team this week to help them understand contracting with a different type of customer than theyre used to. Leading power’s next gen Strazik says GE Vernova can help other companies in the energy ecosystem better understand how to build products at scale and how to reach customers effectivelytwo muscles it built as part of the GE empire. But even the vaunted synergies of being part of a conglomerate, such as the ability to share technology or best practices, couldnt always be optimized given that the divisions had such different customers. And Strazik says that as an independent company he no longer has to compete with other huge divisions for capital. GE Vernova sits at the intersection of two big trendsthe demand for more electricity globally, much of it coming from AI data centersand the need to diversify and clean up the way energy is produced. GE Vernovas business includes power (gas, hydro, nuclear), wind (onshore and offshore), and software and systems, which include grid storage and power conversion. We go into that discussion with a responsibility because 25% of the worlds electricity today is powered with our equipment, Strazik says. Whats becoming more pronounced and clear to the world at large is this is going be a game in which all [of the assets in our portfolio] are going to be needed for us to win. By one measure, Straziks effort to recapture the prowess of GE in its heyday is off to a solid startthe companys stock is up about 150% from its first day of trading nearly a year ago, and in that time, it has outperformed the market and siblings GE Healthcare and GE Aerospace. But as GE Vernova approaches its first anniversary, Strazik seems to believe theres even more the company can do to recapture the entrepreneurial spirit of its former parent. I want to look at different partnering models that we can pursue to provide leverage to Vernova and our shareholders, he says. Were progressing, but I have such ambition for the role Vernova can play in the energy ecosystem that were going to ramp up expectations even further in year two. How does your team keep entrepreneurial spirit alive? How has your company worked to retain the entrepreneurial or innovative zeal of your founders or its legacy? Send your responses to me at stephaniemehta@gmail.com. Id love to publish your best answers. Read more: GE, then and now 3 leadership lessons from General Electrics breakup The complicated business legacy of Jack Welch Whats really holding back renewable energy
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When construction started on a new affordable apartment building in Brooklyn, most of the work on the site happened very quickly. Instead of typical construction, cranes lifted giant modular units into the aireach made up of two separate apartments, plus the corridor between themand set them into place. Trucks delivered nearly four dozen 60-foot-long mods from the factory where they were built in Pennsylvania, staging them next to a nearby cemetery in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East Flatbush. Then, each day for two weeks, construction crews stacked together as many as six of the units. (The massive size of the units made them more challenging to transport than a single modular apartment at a time, but the configuration helped shrink the time for installation on site.) [Photo: courtesy RiseBoro] The apartments were essentially 100% complete inside. (Appliances were strapped to the corridors and just had to be slid into place.) The crew only had to weld the units together and connect wiring and plumbing from each apartment to the hallway. After all of the units were attached, the crew added continuous insulation to the outside and finished other elements like the roof. [Image: courtesy RiseBoro] A project of this size, with 57 apartments and four stories, could have taken 30 months to build, says Yolanda do Campo, director of construction at RiseBoro, the nonprofit developer behind the project. Instead, it took only 22 months. A shorter timeline means significant savings. Less construction time means fewer months of interest payments, do Campo says. Interest payments for the project average around $100,000 a month. It also means, of course, that residents can start moving in faster. In this case, the apartments are limited to seniors in New York Citys affordable housing lottery, with a percentage of the units reserved for seniors who were previously homeless. The process has still taken time, in part because of the bureaucracy involved with the housing lottery. The building was completed last fall; the first residents started moving in in January and only a handful live there so far. But faster construction helped. [Image: courtesy RiseBoro] As builders gain more experience in modular construction, it could happen even more quickly. I really do think that we do this a couple more times and we’re seeing a building come in 15, 16 months, which is somewhat unheard of for something like this, says Grayson Jordan, principal at PCA, the architecture firm behind the building’s design. While modular apartment buildings are starting to become more common in cities, the project went a step further with a passive house design, meaning that it has ultra-low energy demand. The building is well-insulated and airtight. The hot water system runs on a heat pump. The apartments are all-electric and designed to run on solar power, so the building can get as close to net zero energy use as possible. RiseBoro pays for some of the utilities of the tenants, says do Campo. So being passive house and saving energy is critical to the business modelbesides contributing to sustainability, we lower the monthly bills. RiseBoro has pioneered energy-efficient design in other projects, including adding sleek new facades to aging apartment buildings to help them shrink energy use by 80%. Outside, the south side of the building has stepped terraces instead of a flat wall, creating a series of outdoor community spaces for residents and more space for solar panels. There was a learning curve to using modular construction; since the local construction crew didn’t have expertise working with modular units, Riseboro had to help coordinate between the factory and the crew on the ground. But it will get easier in the future, Jordan says. “I see a way forward where this becomes just normal construction,” he says. “It does not seem like rocket science. It just seems like, OK, well, you did this the first time. Let’s work out the kinks.” There are some other potential cost advantages to doing most of the work in a factory offsite. Labor in the Pennsylvania factory is less expensive. And crews can build the modular units year-round without delays because of bad weather. Jordan hopes that it also will become standard for larger affordable apartment buildings. “I think it really makes a lot of sense,” he says. “It’s just a matter of really getting the people who make the decisions comfortable with the idea of building a little bit differently than they’re used to . . . I think we all know that there’s a great need for affordable housing, and this is one of several tools that I think could be powerful in meeting that challenge.”
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The most frequent mistake companies make when applying? They fail to focus on a single, representative example of internally grown innovation. Heres some advice on how to produce a more compelling application for Fast Companys Best Workplaces for Innovators 2025. Get Real Jargon won’t win you any awards. Applications that read as if they were written to appeal primarily to an internal audience are not likely to earn high marks from our judges. Use clear language to describe your innovation programs. We’re looking for companies that do more than just talk the talk. Be Current Focus on a recent or ongoing example. We’re looking for current hotbeds of innovationorganizations that are working to sustain a creative culture and aren’t resting on the laurels of a handful of breakthroughs from a decade ago. Be Specific We’re looking to honor companies that are accomplishing real innovation, not merely laying the groundwork for future breakthroughs. In other words, focus on real projects delivering measurable results. Be Precise We want details. Who did what when, and how? How’d the idea come about? What initial hurdles needed to be overcome? How big was the team? How long did it take? How much investment was required? Emphasize Outcomes Tell us exactly what was accomplished and what it means. What are the impacts or implications for the company, the industry, the broader community? Be Democratic Your big idea may have originated in the C-suite, but (full disclosure) we’re a bit biased toward ideas that come from the bottom up, from unexpected sources (think interns) because a) they’re more surprising and make for better stories, and b) they are more indicative of a pervasive culture of innovation that rewards exploration at all levels. That said, wherever the idea originated, the emphasis should be on the quality of the innovation, the rigor with which it was pursued, and the inclusivity of the effort to bring the idea to fruition. Tell a Story Exhaustive lists of initiatives are boring. Pick a project that seems most emblematic of your own particular culture of innovation and tell the story. (See Be precise and Be democratic above.) You can always include at the end of your example a quick list of other significant recent efforts that have benefited from the same culture. Don’t Procrastinate This years deadline for Best Workplaces for Innovators applications is now just a few days away, March 28.
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