Gene One Benchmarking

In a market that has seen a decline in the number of companies that have gone public and most performing below standards 3 year into becoming public, Gene One wants to make a move onto this stage (Rees, 2007). Gene One is a biotechnology company found in 1996. Gene One was founded by, 29 year old Don Ruiz, who is currently the CEO of the company. Its focus is in the biotech industry and the eradication of disease in tomatoes and potatoes. This research and finding is helped farmers grow crop without the use of pesticides and has take Gene One from a $2 million start up company to a $400 million company in just 8 years.

But before they are ready to go public they must first meet government regulations and also address internal issues such as productivity, leadership issues, right people at the right positions, and the lack of new technology. The companies used to analyze and see how they approached these issues, are General Electric and Avalon Pharmaceuticals.

General Electric

Issue

Productivity growth and lack of innovations When Jack Welch was hired as CEO and President of General Electric, he was only the 11th CEO the company had seen in its 120 years of existence. Also he took over a $13 billion company (http://www.ge.com/company/history/bios/john_welch.html). So if a company has survived for 120 years and was that big of a company, you might be asking why is there issues? You would say keep on doing what has worked. Well Welch wanted to take this successful company and make it even bigger. Two issues that he recognized that was holding the company was productivity growth which at the time was only 1-2% and lack of innovation (Tichy, 1993).

Management Chang and Leadership Training Besides the issues of lack of productivity and innovation, one of the bigger issues that he realized is the lack of strong leadership and the existence of to much bureaucracy to bring these changes during a time in the industry that change is needed to keep on growing and being a leader in the industry (Tichy, 1993). He needs to give his leaders the tools to be able to improve.

Alternative Solutions

Leadership In regards to leadership Jack Welch first identified the people that were ready for change and were going to be able to implement these changes. He identified these individuals by the 360-degree feedback system, in which the individual's peers, subordinates, and boss all rate him or her on leadership skills (Tichy, 1993).

He also brought in Noel Tichy, a professor at University of Michigan, business school, in 1985 to make the Crotonville, the company's leadership training center in Ossing, New York, into a major engine for change (Tichy, 1993). Welch is quoted as saying, "It's a place where our top talents, mid- and upper-level executives from across the company, come for extensive management, business and executive development (http://www.straightfromthegut.com/meet/meet_qa.html)."

Furthermore, in regards to leadership GE also has a process called "Session C," which entails taking 80,000 managers and their bosses fill out the front and back of one-page "internal resume" forms, filling spaces for skills, career goals, and development needs. Then they visit all 12 operating units to conduct fiercely focus one-day personnel reviews. Meeting with top leaders at each site, they bring the number down to 500 and placing them with new and challenging job assignments completes this process (Bennett et. al., 1999).

The key idea that GE's Jack Welch came up with is "boundaryless." In a interview he defined boundaryless as a process where you,

"remove all the barriers among different functions (engineering, manufacturing, marketing and the rest). Boundaryless behavior meant you recognized no distinctions between "domestic" and "foreign" operations. We knocked down external walls with our suppliers just as we knocked out the less visible walls of race and gender internally. Simply put, boundaryless thinking meant we were open to the best ideas and practices from anywhere - another colleague, another department, another country or even another company. It changed our thinking and broadened our awareness. Boundaryless behavior increased the organization's intellect and, thus, its effectiveness." (http://www.straightfromthegut.com/meet/meet_qa.html)

To achieve boundarylessness, you mist first discover where your boundaries are, then figure out how you can take them down (Tichy, 1993).

Productivity and Innovation Just as in leadership GE uses the boundaryless approach in productivity and innovation, because they believe it was the only way they could get the productivity improvements required to win in all businesses (Tichy, 1993).

Another approach that GE incorporated to increase productivity is the Philosophy of Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a process developed by Bill Smith in 1985 at Motorola, which consist of the rigorous application of statistical tools to improve profits, reduce costs and impove speed (Box, 2006). It begins by asking hard questions regarding level of defects, time required to perform operations, and customer expectations (Box, 2006). It is a quality control process which brings robust changes unlike other process.

Outcomes

GE's boundaryless approach, where they got rid of bureaucracy and let the information go between companies freely and also the decision making was more decentralized, as long as company values are being kept, enable GE to increase productivity. This with Six Sigma, Training School and placing the right people in the right positions enabled the company to go from a $13 billion dollar company to a several hundred billion dollar company (http://www.ge.com/company/history/bios/john_welch).

Also the implementation of Six Sigma recorded an after tax earning by $2 billion in 1999 (Box, 2006).

In regards to the Training Center, this ensured that after Jack Welch retired in 2001 the person taking his spot was from the ranks of GE. Jeff Immelt, was appointed as CEO, who was one of Welch's top executives.

Best Practices

What Gene One needs to talk away from this is the idea training their leadership and making sure once the company starts getting bigger and more managers are needed they are not scrambling and looking for help. They need to be able promote within just like GE.

Furthermore, they need to a program to increase efficiency in their research and development department, so they ensure they have the 2 key technologies

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