Leadership, creativity and fear

A candid conversation with the CEO of General Electric about leadership, creativity, fear -- and what it's really like to run the world's most influential company

"surviving a failure gives you more self-confidence. Failures are great learning tools -- but they must be kept to a minimum."

Now, four years into the job, with the company showing much stronger performance, Immelt is stepping out of Welch's shadow and developing a leadership vocabulary of his own. He speaks about creating "growth leaders," holding "dreaming sessions" with customers, developing "imagination breakthrough" teams and projects, and the importance of "simplification" in a big-company environment. And Immelt has won favorable reviews for a new and bold environmental initiative that will double the company's research on clean technologies.

Immelt recently sat down for a talk with Fast Company editor-in-chief John A. Byrne in the CEO's conference room at GE headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut. Read the interiew