GE has been tapping the power of collaborative innovation since the days of Thomas Edison. (His Menlo Park had famously no offices or internal walls.) Today, the company is involved in hundreds of external collaborations. GE Global Research alone is participating in 300 research collaborations at any given time.

I can see you now: GE biomedical engineer Zhengyu Pang at work in GE’s Biosciences labs in Upstate New York, where GE’s cancer mapping technology is under development.

The roster of these projects spans a broad set of collaborators and technologies. They range from academic institutions like MIT (medical imaging), to hospitals like Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (colon cancer research), automakers such as Nissan and government agencies (EV charging infrastructure) and venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (clean tech).

The partners typically share knowledge and expertise, or they can pool financial resources to back new ideas. For example, scientists at GE’s Global Research Center (GRC) in Niskayuna, New York, are building new molecular imaging tools to investigate the characteristics of tumors, which could lead to better diagnostics in the future. “We have great technologists,” said research leader Fiona Ginty. But Ginty’s GRC team needed to “get a deep understanding of the disease, how cancer spreads and progresses” to advance fast. Her team partnered with Sloan Kettering and tapped the brains of the hospital’s physicians and pathologists. “We have scientists who can speak the same language” as clinicians, but don’t have the hands-on knowledge of patient workflow and diagnostic needs, said Ginty. She said that the collaboration allows GE researchers to gather information faster and “make sure that what we are doing is relevant.”

An example of financial innovation collaboration is GE’s $100 million healthymagination challenge, which sought to identify ideas that advance breast cancer detection and early diagnostics. Phase one of the challenge, which closed last November, attracted thousands of researchers, businesses, students and other innovators and generated over 500 ideas. GE and its venture capital partners also launched a similar project in clean energy.

Not a pretty picture: An image of colon cancer tissue stained for a biomarker linked to poor patient outcome.

“Why?” asked GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt at a recent speech. “Because we’re a big innovator in healthcare and technology and because I know that in my lifetime we can treat major diseases, like cancer, more effectively at lower cost.”

Discussing the barometer’s results, GE’s senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock said that “creating conditions for meaningful innovation requires the right blend of internal and external factors that can readily be adapted to meet individual market and customer needs. Fortunately, this year’s study suggests that companies interested in competing are up for the challenge, ready to adopt and deploy a modern approach to innovation that will deliver both value and meaningful solutions.”

The study also confirmed the findings of GE’s inaugural Barometer from January 2011. That survey found that companies are moving beyond the traditional, closed model of innovation and embracing a new paradigm. This new model fosters collaboration between several partners, values the creative power of smaller organizations and individuals, and tailors solutions to meet local needs.

On the flip side, the survey found that the lingering global economic uncertainty has hampered the ability of companies to innovate by making it harder to raise external funding and access venture capital.

“This year’s study confirms a lot of what we’ve been seeing in the global marketplace, that the uncertainties inherent in today’s economic environment are challenging business’ ability to innovate,” said GE’s senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer Beth Comstock. “We see these results, in some ways, as a rallying cry for business leaders to understand where and how their innovation strategies are being challenged and to drive to new models. Innovation is a powerful lever to address the challenges of a growing world. It allows us to use resources more efficiently, produce more with less and deliver better technologies to help markets drive economic growth and better quality of life.”

Last week, Fast Company magazine carried a cover story titled “Generation Flux,” which featured Comstock. In that story Comstock anticipated the Barometer’s findings. She talked about the need for speed and agility in a fast changing world, the importance of accepting chaos and embracing new skills. Innovation is a big part of this. “Business model innovation is constant in this economy,” Comstock said. “You start with a vision of a platform. For a while, you think there’s a line of sight, and then it’s gone. There’s suddenly a new angle,” she said.

The Financial Times pointed to Germany as “the most self-confident large economy in business innovation, according to the survey.” The newspaper quoted GE chief economist Marco Anunziata as saying that “Germany has performed brilliantly when it comes to adding new ideas to products and processes in the kinds of sectors in which it has traditionally excelled.”

The poll picked the U.S. as the country with the best reputation for innovation. The full findings of the innovation barometer are here.

Ten households in this southern city, perhaps best known for the nearby Robins Air Force Base, will have their homes fitted with GE’s Smart Grid technology and the company’s Brillion suite of “intelligent” ovens, refrigerators and other efficient ecomagination-qualified appliances.

The Warner Robins families will be part of a two-year pilot program run jointly by GE Appliances and Flint Energies, a Georgia utility company. The project is aimed at reducing the use of electricity during peak hours, when it typically costs more to generate and deliver power. “This pilot will provide the utility industry with tremendous insights on how to engage consumers in efforts to overcome some our greatest energy challenges,” said Dave McCalpin, general manager of GE’s home energy management business.

GE’s Brillion technology, which debuted last year at the Consumer Electronics Show, is built around the idea that in addition to conservation, managing the timing of energy consumption is a key part our sustainable energy future. If consumers have more information about their energy use profile, they will make better timing decisions about charging their electric vehicle or running the dishwasher.

Utilities and home consumers are both GE customers, but they each face their own challenges. Utilities work hard to meet peak electricity demand in the afternoon, while at night some of their turbines idle. Consumers are often paying for electricity on a flat rate where running the dishwasher at night, when electricity is potentially cheaper, reaps no financial benefits to them.

Contrast that with the folks in Warner Robins. They can go to bed knowing that their dryer will be saving them cents and dollars while they sleep. Here’s how it works. The “brain” of the smart system is a piece of GE technology called Nucleus energy manager. Flint Energies will send price information to Nucleus, which share it with a smart thermostat connected to the appliances. The smart dishwasher or dryer then “listen” for the pricing signals to avoid using energy near peak.

For example, the refrigerator disables its “quick chill” feature. The washer will delay the start of its cycle or will automatically defaults to low energy wash cycle during the same time. The consumer, however, always maintains control of the appliances and can choose to override the system.

The Brillion system also comes with GE’s new Whole-Home Sensor, which measures and shares information about real-time household electricity usage. This sensor provides an energy measuring option for utilities and homeowners that don’t yet have Smart Meters.

All this energy usage data is constantly at the customer’s fingertips. GE has developed a smartphone application that allows homeowners to communicate with Nucleus and monitor the entire system away from home. Nucleus will let them to adjust their thermostat when they are, say, on a skiing vacation and turn on the heat on the way home from the chalet.

Said Jimmy Autry of Flint Energies: “We feel that the intelligence built into GE’s appliances, thermostat and energy manager will make peak-load reduction easier and more cost effective for our customers.”

Clean Machine: This 7F Syngas Turbine manufactured in Greenville, South Carolina, will be at the core of GE’s IGCC technology supplied to South Korea.

Cleaner coal may sound like an oxymoron. But take a look at GE’s first IGCC project in South Korea. The country is among the world’s top ten coal consumers. Over the last two decades, the use of coal for power generation more than doubled from 17 percent to 47 percent, making coal the nation’s leading source of electricity. But the country also committed to cut greenhouse gases, speed up clean and renewable energy projects and boost power efficiency.

GE is helping to resolve the conflict. The company just announced that it would supply the technology for a new 300 megawatt IGCC power station south of Seoul, the Korean capital. At the core of the plant will be GE gas and steam turbines manufactured in Greenville, South Carolina, and Schenectady, New York.

The IGCC technology converts coal into synthetic gas, or syngas. That’s the G, or “gasification,” part in IGCC. Although gasification has been around for decades, GE engineers found a new, clean and efficient way to burn coal-based syngas in a turbine to produce power and reduce harmful emissions. Once the syngas has been cleaned of contaminants and acid rain components such as mercury and sulfur, it is then fed into a highly efficient heavy duty turbine where it burns like fuel in a jet engine. The burning syngas spins the turbine and generates electricity. To increase energy efficiency, the technology also captures waste heat at multiple points in the process and converts it into more power, hence the “combined cycle,” or the “CC,” in IGCC.

“The Korean government is mindful of the need to reduce the country’s carbon footprint, while ensuring security of energy supply,” said Kyong-Il Ohm, a general manager of Korea Western Power Co. (KOWEPO), which purchased the syngas turbine technology from GE. “Through the application of GE technology, we will be able to use coal, the most abundant source of primary energy, in a more environmentally friendly manner.”

The KOWEPO project will use GE’s giant 7F Syngas Turbine, made in Greenville, and a D-11 steam turbine generator, manufactured in Schenectady. GE will start shipping components to Korea in 2014 and the plant will come on-line a year later.

Done deal: CEO of KOWEPO M.D. Kim shake hands with Kenji Uenishi, President GE Energy Asia Pacific.

GE already supplied technology for several IGCC plants in the United States. In the video below, Mark Hornick, general manager of the Polk Power Station in Tampa, Fla., explains the technology and its impact on the community.

Cape Town Express: GE Transportation will supply South Africa’s Transnet Freight Rail with 143 new locomotives.

This economic engine is motoring ahead. Today, GE Transportation said that it would sell 43 ecomagination-qualified C30ACi diesel-electric freight locomotives to South Africa’s Transnet Freight Rail (TFR). This new purchase comes on top of a 100-engine order that TFR placed with GE two years ago.

The deal supplies South Africa’s aging train park with the first new locomotives in decades. The 3,300 horse power C30ACi engines were developed specifically for TFR and contain innovative GE technology that will boost South Africa’s aging locomotive fleet and add muscle to its hauling capability.

The C30ACi locomotives are striking 130-ton orange, green and yellow steel behemoths. But they zip along the rails with agility and grace. That’s because GE engineers came up with an efficient solution to transfer power from the engine to the wheels.

Think of the diesel-electric locomotive as a power plant on rails. The diesel engine converts fuel into electricity, which then spins traction motors that drive the axles. By relying on breakthrough technology that uses alternating current (AC) the engineers were able ramp up engine efficiency and hauling capacity without any additional fuel increase. As a result, three GE locomotives do the work of four older locomotives, lowering emissions by 1,400 tons of CO2 and saving the rail operator as much as 160,000 gallons of fuel per year.

The core parts of the locomotives such as engines, alternators, and traction motors will be manufactured in GE plants in Erie and Grove City, Pennsylvania. They will provide work for hundreds of American welders, electricians, machinists and assembly workers. The locomotives will be put together at GE’s customer facility in South Africa.

1. Reducing the High Cost of Solar Power: In April, GE announced that its thin film solar panels made from a crystalline compound of the elements cadmium and telluride achieved nearly 13 percent efficiency. Consider that a one percent increase in panel efficiency equals around a 10 percent decrease in system costs. The thin film panels will be manufactured at a new solar panel plant near Denver, Colorado. The factory, the country’s largest, will create 355 jobs and make enough solar panels per year to power 80,000 homes. It is scheduled to open in 2013.

In October, engineers at GE’s Global Research Center reported that they developed a system that aims to cut installation costs by half, from $6.50 per watt to just $3. At that price, the savings provided would more than offset the expense of mounting them on the roof.

2. Integrating Renewable Power into the Grid More Seamlessly: Solar and wind power provide clean, renewable energy. But how do utilities and power grid operators replace lost power when the sun stops shining or the wind stops blowing? Enter GE’s new flexible power technology, like the FlexEfficiency 50 Combined Cycle Power Plant. GE invested some $500 million in the R&D effort that led to the FlexEfficiency 50. The system can ramp up power production on a cloudy day in just minutes, twice the rate of today’s energy benchmarks. In November, GE announced that it would build the first FlexEfficiency 50 plant in northern France. It will produce 510 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 600,000 households. The plant is scheduled to come on line in late 2015.

3. Slashing Emissions and Fuel Costs for Jet Engines: The LEAP engine, short for Leading Edge Aviation Propulsion, is manufactured by CFM International, a joint company between GE Aviation and France’s Snecma. The engine can achieve double-digit improvements in fuel burn and emissions, and lower maintenance costs. In 2011, CFM received orders for over 2,830 engines. This brings total LEAP orders to 3,160 engines, valued at $38 billion (U.S. list price).

To explore how the innovative tech of the LEAP engine reduces costs and emissions, check out the infographic.

4. Connecting the World’s Machines: From enormous gas turbines to kitchen microwave ovens, machines are vast repositories of data. Harvesting and analyzing this information and then applying the insights can make the systems run smarter and more efficiently. That’s why in November GE announced that it would hire 400 software engineers and professionals and open a new software center in San Ramon in the Bay Area. They will be developing digital tools that gather and analyze the millions of gigabytes of data generated by controls, sensors, computers and other devices that together make the brains of industrial machines. These software tools will predict and respond to changes, and guide customers in how to best use their assets. GE already has some 5,000 software engineers on staff. GE’s software revenues are about $2.5 billion. The company expects double-digit growth in this segment from now until 2015.

5. Personalizing Medicine: GE has been focusing on technologies to help clinicians better personalize diagnoses and treatments. In short, GE provides tools that help physicians assess a disease in individual patients and pick the treatment that fits each best. For example, in 2010 GE Healthcare acquired Clarient, a California-based molecular diagnostics firm and the manufacturer laboratory tests such as Mammostrat. This test allows doctors assess the likelihood of breast cancer recurrence. “If her cancer does not have an aggressive profile, she may not need additional therapies,” said Gerard Brophy, head of new product development at GE Healthcare Medical Diagnostics.

In September 2011, GE announced that it would invest $1 billion in new cancer solutions and the company has also introduced a $100 million innovation challenge open to anyone to come up with new ideas to fight cancer. “Why?” asked GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt at a recent speech. “Because we’re a big innovator in healthcare and technology and because I know that in my lifetime we can treat major diseases, like cancer, more effectively at lower cost.”

Yet despite the energy riches, the island is still grappling with power shortages. During the week of December 11, a Russian news service reported that “almost half” of Sakhalin, including communities ringing its largest city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, remained without power due to a “disruption” at a large plant.

On Tuesday, December 13, GE delivered a dose of good news for the city’s 174,000 residents. The company announced that it would supply one of Sakhalin’s power stations with three innovative LM6000 PF aeroderivative gas turbines.

Technicians Lee Rertel and Darrell Miller at work on an LM6000 gas turbine, whose technology is derived from GE’s CF6 aircraft engine.

Think of the LM6000, and others in its family, as a jet engine afraid of heights. GE engineers have built upon its aviation roots, hence the aeroderivative appellation, and modified the technology to function in industrial power generation and marine propulsion.

Each turbine has a jet engine at its core, which has been modified to take advantage of clean-burning fuels such as natural gas, biofuels and also ethanol to make electricity. The result is fuel flexibility, and much lower emissions and resource demands. The turbines are capable of achieving over 50 megawatts of output in as little as 10 minutes after startup.

One handsome machine: the FlexAero LM6000-PH.

The LM6000 engine cores for the order will be manufactured in GE’s plant in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the turbines will be assembled at the company’s Jacintoport Manufacturing facility outside of Houston, Texas.

Over 1,000 turbines from the LM6000 family, which is ecomagination-qualified, are working around the world. The Sakhalin machinery is scheduled for delivery in March 2012 and the turbines are expected to start generating a total of 138 megawatts of power 12 months later.

Sakhalin officials said the turbines will significantly increase the reliability of the existing power supply on the island by creating a unified energy system. “And this is the way we go,” said Governor of the Sakhalin Region Alexander Khoroshavin.

Flexibility, reliability, and efficiency are the key qualities of the LM6000 family of turbines. The three aeroderivative gas turbines in the Sakhalin package will offer reliability of “greater than 99 percent and availability more than 97 percent.” That’s because the jet engine technology allows the turbine to respond quickly to fluctuations in demand without sacrificing efficiency, the same qualities you expect on an airliner powered by GE engines.

GE and its Russian counterparts are already discussing further cooperation and the possibility to develop alternative aources of energy on the nearby Kuril Islands. American jet technology in Russia has never been embraced so warmly.

One of the difficulties boosters of electric vehicles have faced is overcoming perceptions that the technology required to make them a practical, everyday option isn’t quite there yet or is somehow too complicated. That’s never really been true, and GE’s announcement is just the latest sign that electric cars are becoming a mainstream option for consumers.

Now that the WattStation can be purchased online, even from your mobile phone, the “end to end” charging infrastructure needed to electrify transportation is that much more accessible. The WattStation provides a full-cycle charge to a 24 kWh battery in only 4 to 8 hours. Charging the Leaf or any other EV using a standard electrical outlet takes 12 to 18 hours. The sleek WattStation, unlike other chargers on the market, also contains built-in fuses, which provide overload protection. It can be mounted on indoor or outdoor walls.

The company announced this morning that the low fare carrier Southwest Airlines would purchase a total of 416 engines valued at $4.7 billion. The order includes 300 innovative LEAP engines to power the airline’s 150 new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, and 116 CFM56 engines for 58 planes of the existing 737 model.

To explore how the innovative tech of the LEAP engine reduces costs and emissions, check out the infographic.

GE and Snecma, a member of the Safran Group, each hold a 50 percent stake in CFM. The new airplanes will begin delivery in 2017.

CFM started working on the LEAP engine, short for Leading Edge Aviation Propulsion, in 2005. The goal was to develop a high-bypass turbofan engine that radically increases the fuel efficiency of narrow-body aircraft that carry between 100 and 250 passengers and fly within a 4,000-mile range.

The result is a highly reliable engine with lower maintenance costs that can achieve double-digit improvements in fuel burn and emissions.

For example, the ecomagination-qualified LEAP can save up to 15 percent in fuel costs, compared to current CFM models in its class. That’s as much as $12 million per aircraft over 15 years, at $2.50 per gallon of fuel.

These saving are possible because the engine incorporates many breakthrough features and technologies. Consider, for example, that the air passing through the engine is much hotter than the melting point of the materials inside the jet engine. These higher operating temperatures known as thermal efficiency result in lesser fuel use. CFM engineers have developed an innovative way to transfer heat from the engine so that it can burn hot and clean and conserve fuel.

LEAP’s composite fan blade design and innovative three-dimensional, woven resin transfer molding (RTM) manufacturing process lower the engine’s weight, make it more fuel efficient, and improve maintenance.

The magazine Aviation Week reported that CFM was “focusing on reducing LEAP maintenance costs by combining its hard-earned CFM56 design experience of high-cycle and high-durability with the advanced architecture of General Electric’s long-range GE90 and GEnx turbofans.”

The magazine quoted LEAP manager of engineering Ted Ingling: “We’re bringing the capability of the underlying technology for fuel efficiency, emissions and acoustics into narrow-body, high-cycle operations. We understand both regimes, and we understand that entire airlines built their entire low cost carrier approach on a situation where 10 cycles per day is the norm.”

But challenges remain. One of the largest is making sure that customers have enough power when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing.

To keep electricity flowing, GE invested $500 million in the development of the innovative FlexEfficiency 50 power plant. The plant can quickly ramp up and ramp down power output and deliver electricity when it is needed.

Yesterday, GE and the large French utility Electricite de France announced that they will jointly develop the first FlexEfficiency power station to be connected to a national grid.

Clara Gaymard, President GE France ; Henri Proglio, EDF President and CEO ; Ricardo Cordoba, Regional President and CEO GE Energy; Yves Menat, General Manager Thermal Europe, GE Energy; Jean-Luc Cabannes, EDF Account Executive, GE Energy, in front of GE’s FlexEfficiency 50 model.

The project will be located at Bouchain in northern France. It will produce 510 megawatts of electricity, enough electricity to power 600,000 households. The plant is scheduled to come on line in late 2015.

The ecomagination-qualified technology also aims to spur a broader rollout of renewable energy projects by giving utilities the flexibility to quickly switch on a drizzly, windless day from solar and wind power generation to gas.

GE’s flex technology is radical because it allows the gas turbine to respond to surges and fluctuations in electricity demand in as fast as 30 minutes. That’s twice the rate of the current industry benchmarks. This flexibility as well as the plant’s 61 percent efficiency will allow EDF to burn less gas and reduce CO2 emissions. When combined with renewables, the plant can reach efficiencies approaching 70 percent.

GE will also roll out the flex technology in Turkey, China, Japan and elsewhere in Asia.