Jack Welch, 2009 IW Manufacturing Hall of Fame Inductee
Bold, energetic, incisive, creative. These are just some of the plaudits attributed to Jack Welch, the role model for CEOs in the 1980s and 1990s.
Welch, a chemical engineer, joined General Electric in 1960 and became its youngest vice president in 1972.
In 1981, he began a 20-year tenure as GE CEO during which the company's market capitalization rose from $13 billion to $400 billion.
Welch streamlined GE operations, reduced the workforce by 112,000 in five years (leading to the "Neutron Jack" moniker), put GE in the entertainment business through the acquisition of NBC, steered the company heavily into financial services, championed Six Sigma and combined latitude for GE managers with an insistence that GE businesses be at the top of their market segments.
Few corporate leaders have recognized and developed talent as well as Welch. Since leaving GE, he has written extensively on leadership, taught at the MIT Sloan School of Management and recently invested in Chancellor University, which will offer an online MBA program called the Jack Welch Institute.
