?We invest more in tech during a recession?

You can call John F Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore as the showcase research centre of General Electric (GE). Built on a 50-acre plush campus, the nine-year old R&D centre boasts of 4,200 employees and 870 patents. Its managing director Guillermo Wille?s pride in the centre is obvious when he talks of the massive contributions in developing most powerful aviation engines or baby warmers for rural areas. Bolivia-born Wille has found the key to getting the right talent?Indians studying in universities abroad. In a conversation with Pragati Verma, he explains what went into making it a success story and his plans to steer it ahead. Excerpts:

As major corporates tighten belts to steer through the tough economy, is R&D taking a back seat, even if temporarily?

Absolutely not. GE is a company that has been known for taking advantage of tough economic times to put more effort and more resources into technology. While other companies take resources away in tough times, GE adds resources. When the economic situation improves, we hope to come out with products that have very good chances to succeed in the market. GE is known to have put more efforts and resources into technology during every single economic recession. And this time is no different. I expect growth to slowdown this year and in coming years because of the economic situation in the world, but we will continue to grow.

Isn?t there pressure to do short term customer-oriented research in tough times?

I wouldn?t call it greater pressure, but I would call it more focused since we have very clear requirements to meet. But we also have a very clear idea of what we want to see out of the centre for the next 5-10 years. A good part of the research team also works continuously for long term goals and those are areas of 5-10 years horizon or even longer.

Has recession changed the direction of research?

I cannot say that the focus changes that fast in a company. But in the last 4-5 years, focus of R&D has changed significantly. We have initiated the ambitious eco-imagination programme. It is about tackling the toughest problems the world is facing?pollution, global warming and ecological harmful products.

You had an early bird advantage, but GE has set up more research centres now. Are you still ahead of the curve?

The Shangahai centre has 1,500 employees, Munich has about 100 and the US centre has about 1,500-1,800. In comparison, we have 4,200 employees. We all work together developing technology for the company and we have developed centres of excellence in different parts of the world, depending on the region?s capabilities. If you would go to China, you would see that the good part of our work is oriented towards manufacturing technologies. There is push into renewable energies at the Munich centre. Bangalore is a large centre with diverse capabilities and centres of excellence, with most of them focusing on materials, material development, material research and a strong concentration on analytics. We work in our areas of expertise but pretty much in all product areas of GE.

Is there any innovation or discovery at the centre that has made you proud?

It is hard for me to say which are my favourites, I have too many of them. I am extremely proud of all the developments we have achieved. We have a centre of excellence for reciprocating engines for locomotives. We are working on heavy engines that have multi-fuel capabilities and are running those engines today on palm oil and tomorrow, we will be running those engines on jathropa. I am very proud of the fact that we are probably one of the first centres in the world that are working on multi-fuel engines. Our aircraft engine GE90 is the most powerful in the world. It can help fly the 777-300 plane, across the Atlantic or Pacific and you need only two engines as against four today. We have also worked on an engine that will power the Boeing Dreamliner that is also called the 787.

If you have ever been to Shanghai, the South railway station has a very large transparent roof, which spans over 300 meters, and there is not one single pole holding this roof. The material for the roof and the whole concept of the roof were developed here.

You have also developed products specifically for Indian market?

We call it, ?In India for India.? We developed an electrocardiogram that we call the Mac 400. This is a very small unit, the size of a laptop computer. It runs on batteries that can take up to 100 cardiograms on one single battery charge. A nurse or a practitioner can take the unit out for diagnosis in rural areas. We have also developed a high frequency x-ray unit that again is cost efficient and easy to run. We just announced a baby warmer we call lullaby that basically keeps new born babies that need more attention, warm and in the right environment so they have a higher chance to survive. These units can also be taken to rural areas and can cater to developing markets.

Is a significant chunk of R&D being done at the centre directed at Indian users?

It is not a very large effort today, but it is increasing. We started with our global efforts. Now we are recognising that markets like India and South America are growing for us and we are putting more and more efforts into these areas.

Basically, if you take the population of engineers and scientists in the whole company, it is roughly 30,000 and we have about 6,000 of them in India. That means that about 25% of the scientist population of the company is in India. That gives you an idea that the work, to a very large extent, has to be for global markets.