And then there is the sorry story of General Electric, as told by noted business journalist William D. Cohan in Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon. (Cohan’s publishers must have real faith in the book: You’ll notice that the company’s name does not appear in the book title, and its logo appears on the cover only as 18-point shadow text.) Welch could have been indicted, on multiple occasions, but in one quite famous incident, District Attorney Rudolph Juliani chose not to. Possibly he saw a major future ally in his political future. This is another subtle way that corruption seeps into American politics. Sonnenfeld, the school’s associate dean for leadership studies, named computer-assisted design and computer-assisted manufacturing, among other ventures, as diversions. “They got into the internet, the computer business, it made no sense,” he said. And yet, despite perhaps one of the biggest downturns in corporate history, GE’s story is not over yet. The company continues to innovate in the aviation industry, turning out impressive new jet engines and working on ways to power aircraft without fossil fuels. It’s also focusing energy on the promises of 3D printing for industrial applications. In 1941, GE built the first U.S. jet engine, the I-A, that was used next year to power America's first jet aircraft for military use. Eventually, 100,000 GE turbo superchargers were used by the U.S. military in aircraft during World War II.

This dynamic was not confined to Immelt. It was rampant throughout the company’s top ranks. As a result, the ability of top executives to understand what was really going on was quite limited. The only people who could actually dig down into the numbers and see what was going on were in finance. And as I mentioned above, the finance people didn’t have much incentive to bring negative news to Welch or Immelt. One of the weaknesses in this very good book is Cohan’s focus on the horse race, important to Wall Street, but somehow America doesn’t appear much in the story.Cohan has written about the titans of wall street and business and in his latest book he assuredly does not disappoint. Perhaps the most legendary business (conglomerate) and storied culture is General Electric or as it's been known for years, simply GE. One of the reasons I’m doing what I’m doing is because during the days I was in the headquarters, I was visiting all Silicon Valley companies, Boston companies, trying to stay at the leading edge of what was coming from all these people so that we could bring it in,” said Grewal, whose team met with Steve Jobs at Apple, among many others. ‘It did not have to be this’ Unfortunately for GE and fortunately for its customers, the rigged system began to fall apart around 1960 when a federal investigation began. All the years I was there it was just a wonderful company,” Grewal said, recounting not just the heyday but the years that followed until he left GE in 2011. “It attracted a lot of very bright people, hard-working people...The work was interesting and the colleagues were wonderful. In a lot of good ways, management left us alone.” hear about the new scrutiny of business by Sarbanes-Oxley following the crash and burn of Enron and Bernie Ebbers WorldCom. These were big events.

A business journalist traces the rise and fall of General Electric, the company that once exemplified American business. Cohan doesn’t fall into idol-worship of Welch. He admires his leadership, but gives lots of room for Welch’s detractors. Cohan is meticulous in documenting Welch’s failures both professionally and personally. Cohan’s real scorn is reserved for the Board of Directors though. Several times he piles blame for the decline of the company on them, and it’s hard to disagree. Almost all of the board members declined to be interviewed for the book, and I imagine a few of them regret that decision. He ends with a direct shot at the board for enriching Culp at the expense of the shareholders. In 1957, GE supplied power to nearly 120,000 customers from the world's first commercial nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. In 1906, a Swedish engineer invented voice radio. Before that, the closest thing people had to it was telegraphs transmitted via the dots and dashes of Morse code.That meltdown forced Immelt to sell off vast troves of businesses and exposed management flaws that had always existed. Today there are fewer than 2,000 GE people left in Connecticut. Some local companies, from Synchrony Financial to Veoci, owe their heritage to the faded giant — though fewer than we’d like to see. When I think about it I’m just really sad because it did not have to be this,” Grewal said. If it had made different choices, he added, “GE could have held together. It could have been the future.”