Tahl Raz

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 faceof 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"--

Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change

Imagine It Forward

FROM ONE OF TODAY'S FOREMOST INNOVATION LEADERS, AN INSPIRING, PERSONAL APPROACH TO MASTERING CHANGE IN THE FACE OF UNCERTAINTY. NAMED A 2018 BEST BUSINESS BOOK PICK BY FAST COMPANY AND WIRED UK. Confronting change is incredibly hard, both organizationally and personally. People become resistant. They are afraid. Yet the pace of change in our world will never be slower than it is right now, says Beth Comstock, the former Vice Chair and head of marketing and innovation at GE. Imagine It Forward is an inspiring, fresh, candid, and deeply personal book about how to grapple with the challenges to change we face every day. It is a different kind of narrative, a big picture book that combines Comstock’s personal story in leading change with vital lessons on overcoming the inevitable roadblocks. One of the most successful women in business, Comstock shares her own transformation story from introverted publicist to GE’s first woman Vice Chair, and her hard-won lessons in shifting GE, a 125 year old American institution, toward a new digital future and a more innovative culture. As the woman who initiated GE's Ecomagination clean-energy and its (and NBC’s) digital transformations, Comstock challenged a global organization to not wait for perfection, but to seek out emerging trends, embrace smart risks and test ideas boldly, and often. She shows how each one of us can become a “change maker” by leading with imagination. “Ideas are rarely the problem,” writes Comstock. “What holds all of us back, really—is fear. It’s the attachment to the old, to ‘What We Know.’” As Comstock makes clear, transforming the mindset and culture of a company is messy. There is no easy checklist. It is fraught with uncertainty, tension and too often failure. It calls for the courage to defy convention, go around corporate gatekeepers when necessary, and reinvent what is possible. For all those looking to spearhead change in their companies and careers, and reinvent “the way things are done,” Imagine It Forward masterfully points the way.

Change is the only constant. Learn to be a change-maker. 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, 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 one of the largest corporations in the world, 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.

Beth Comstock

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