Out of the box thinkers will win the game
Recruiters and HR who think out of the box can make all the difference, as this GE initative proved. GE Aviation had been working on a challenging project to reduce the weight of the engines, which the team successfully managed to do, but with one major seeming unsurmountable problem; reducing the weight of the brackets that bolts the engine to the wing; which would proportionately reduce the new engine weight.
Being a world leading employer brand, GE had a pool of the best brains from the best universities working on this new challenge. However, none of them seemed to be able to come up with a solution.
It was now up to GE’s recruitment team to find the right person to get the job done. That’s when someone from the HR team hit upon the brilliant idea of opening up the challenge to the world, through an open innovation contest. If anyone could design the brackets in such a way that the weight gets reduced by 33% from the current weight, that design would win $20000.
GE received 700 applications from 56 countries, and the winning design came from a place called Salatiga in Indonesia. The winning design came from Arie Kurniawan, a 22-year old diploma engineer running a motorbike garage with his brother. The winning design of Arie was able to slash the weight of the brackets, not by 33%, but by a whooping 84%. Arie had no Phds, Degrees from top universities, prior exposure to the aviation industry, or any patent to his name.
As Raghu Krishnamurthy himself says “Under no circumstance any spec we designed for the right kind of talent would have hired Arie Kurniawan (the winner)”
Reference:
- Lead. (2015, April 08). Talent Is Abundant, Intelligence Is A Commodity - Raghu Krishnamoorthy @ LEAD Presented by HR.com, [Video File] Retrieved August 29, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnoZxu1Qaxg
- Staff, W. (2014, April 11). How GE Plans to Act Like a Startup and Crowdsource Breakthrough Ideas. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2014/04/how-ge-plans-to-act-like-a-startup-and-crowdsource-great-ideas/
- T. K. (2016, February 23). Jet Engine Bracket from Indonesia Wins 3D Printing Challenge. Retrieved from https://www.ge.com/reports/post/77131235083/jet-engine-bracket-from-indonesia-wins-3d-printing/