I feel good about the GE O&G interviews yesterday. The people I met with were smart, motivated and were working on intersting, impactful challenges. The company clearly has the potential for major impact on the world’s energy supply and carbon footprint. Furthermore it is part of a corporation that also is doing more and more work in wind, water, and solar, as Alex commented on my last post.
The real question here will be fit. How does an entrepreneurial software executive work within the context of a huge, bureaucratic heavy industry company? How does he A. create value and B. not go insane? The answer is non-obvious but after yesterday’s discussions I am optimistic. The best matches for my skills and experience seem to be in:
product management – managing the interface between engineering, marketing, and strategy to make sure the company is building products that serve customer needs and support the company’s direction
strategic marketing – helping a company that is used to clients coming to it to place orders modernize and be more proactive about market segmentation and accordingly segmented sales processes
sales operations management – working with the globally distributed sales force to create processes and systems to support them for greater communication and efficiency
We shall see; they should be in touch within a week or so with feedback. If nothing else, I finished Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets on the trip, so on to The Prisoner of Azkaban!