Last August, during the monsoon soaked Indian summer, 12 highly motivated experts with varying backgrounds toured villages in West and South India to gather insights into innovative ideas.

The team of specialists—from GE’s Engineering and Supply Chain groups to Sales and Marketing—spent most of the time meeting with India’s so-called “frugal innovators” in the energy and oil and gas arenas to co-develop new technologies. Best captured in the words simplicity and speed, the four-week trip was a shared eye-opening experience that yielded three new product concepts. Now called “Frugal Innovation,” team projects like these represent a new idea in partnering for innovation within GE’s Oil & Gas business. Simply put, simple design and a minimal investment of time and resources has the same growth ambition potential as any other new product introduction.

As customers, suppliers, and our employee base globalize and the speed of innovation (idea-to-market) increases, GE sees a unique advantage in tapping into these talented groups to explore collaborative development and product conception at unprecedented speed.

A New Day for Product and Solutions Development

Globalization, among other factors, has forced our “traditional” customers, partners, and suppliers to think differently and take new risks in idea and product development. Combine this with an emerging set of customers and suppliers entering the energy and oil and gas arenas from new growth markets, and we now have a fertile ground for developing new products and solutions with the collaborative effort of our external stakeholders.

Simplicity and speed are at the core of our Frugal Innovation idea-to-commercialization cycle. In addition to India, GE’s Oil & Gas business has identified a number of emerging regions around the world where this approach seems to happen more naturally.

Vice President of Turbomachinery for GE’s Oil & Gas business Joe Mastrangelo, who conceptualized the Frugal Innovation initiative after a typical venture capital start-up, understood that driving future innovation and project development in GE’s Oil & Gas business meant connecting our ideas with the ideas of those in growing regions, as well as expanded internal and external networks—and moving quickly.

Frugal Innovation helps GE engage with our customers & suppliers in a capacity greater than that of product delivery. This method not only strengthens our business relationships and individual successes, it makes us partners in innovation, which is a win-win in the short and long term.