Opposite to popular lore, Thomas Edison didn't invent the outset lightbulb. That was Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, a British chemist, physicist, and inventor. Edison merely came up with i that could burn for 600 hours instead of 40, making it the get-go commercially viable "electric lamp" in history.

For scientists at General Electric'south global research facility in Niskayuna, New York, that's more than trivia. It's a guiding principle for Anil Duggal, 38, an affable chemistry researcher who is trying to pull off an Edison-like feat. Duggal and a cross-disciplinary squad of scientists at the center want to develop a new kind of electric lamp using an emerging technology called organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), nearly easily thought of as calorie-free-up plastic.

Why? Call it artistic destruction. Or, for the slightly more jaded perspective, call it a Hail Mary laissez passer to relieve the iconic only struggling GE Lighting business organisation (now part of GE's $14 billion consumer and industrial division). In 2002, it lost all of its Home Depot business to rival Philips. That unmarried defeat wiped out a full 7% of the unit's annual sales. Business hasn't improved much since. And in a commodity line such every bit lighting, Duggal's work likewise fits in nicely with CEO Jeffrey Immelt's button to foster innovations that let GE widen its margins with hard-to-re-create products rather than competing on incremental improvements and price.

What's most striking about GE's renewed interest in innovation is not so much the technologies themselves, but how the company gets them from lab to market. "As a scientist, you have to figure out what makes this place tick. And it'due south not just technology," Duggal says of GE's research middle. "If y'all can't sell a project, then you're going to have a hard time hither." And so OLEDs may not be GE'due south nearly cutting-edge enquiry projection — that might exist its nanotechnology or molecular-medicine efforts. Simply information technology is a applied science that may one day salvage GE's flagging lighting business organization by, ironically, driving a stake through the lightbulb equally we know it. Then OLEDs provide an intriguing window onto how the company integrates long-range enquiry into today's strategic planning and how new ideas become through the arrangement without getting thwarted, blocked, or worse. How do you lot conductor in a game-changing innovation that'due south years away from completion? Here's GE'south shot at solving 1 of the oldest problems in business.

OLEDs are organic versions of LEDs — the stuff that makes our cell-phone buttons lite up — with a couple of key differences. For starters, instead of emitting a single bright point of light like LEDs do, OLEDs produce a patch of light over a wider area. Second, OLEDs consist of a thin, flexible, plasticlike material, dissimilar LEDs, which are fabricated every bit rigid semiconductor fries — a process that would be laughably expensive for general lighting. Duggal hopes that the thin material will i day be printed using a cheap ringlet-to-curl process, as newspapers are. That flexibility opens up a range of imaginative possibilities, from lit ceiling tiles that would replace fluorescent overheads to illuminated curtains.

Duggal began to have serious notice of OLEDs about five years ago. As a chemist in corporate R&D, he had a general involvement in the technology as far back as 1989, when it was pioneered at Cambridge Academy. It wasn't until scientists showed that OLEDs could produce a white light, spelling opportunity for general lighting, that Duggal'southward interest was fully piqued.

"Every year, OLED operation was getting exponentially meliorate," he says. "I day I started plotting lines on a slice of newspaper showing this exponential growth, comparing information technology with conventional incandescent and fluorescent lighting engineering. And you lot could meet the lines start to intersect. So I'one thousand thinking, If we're a lighting visitor, in that location's both an opportunity and a threat here. This is a engineering that could overtake us, and suddenly our own lighting business concern becomes meaningless."

Inspired (and frightened) by his sketch, Duggal began chasing some seed coin within the company to meet how OLEDs might fit in with GE'south existing businesses. He was able to convince a handful of executive managers at the lab, and he got the money he needed to first. Merely to heave the project'south initial funding and its staff from but Duggal to a squad of five, he enlisted the aid of Greg Chambers. At the time, Chambers was ane of GE'south business program managers — a liaison between the global research center and one of GE'due south concern units. Together, they secured a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to written report OLEDs every bit an efficient lighting alternative.

When Immelt took the reins in 2001 with a renewed focus on innovation, Duggal knew that this leadership change was his opportunity. Under Jack Welch, who considered investing in new engineering to exist a "wild swing," OLEDs would accept probable remained a side project. Now they could be a full-fourth dimension calling. It became a affair of Duggal building support for the technology among scientists and engineers besides every bit the marketers and sales forces in the business units. "They said, 'Yeah, nosotros think it's important for GE to be in this,' " says Duggal.

When it came fourth dimension to present OLEDs as a candidate for advanced technology funding, Chambers quips that he went in and told his bosses that "GE should invent a new lightbulb every hundred years or then."

Turns out, he was but half joking. While the OLED marketplace for displays in products such every bit cell phones is a crowded and competitive one, with at least 25 serious players chasing it, nobody but Philips and Sylvania seemed to exist going afterwards the full general lighting market. "A lot of low-hanging fruit is all the same available in lighting," Duggal told people at GE at the time, referring to the relative lack of competition. The project won blessing equally an advanced technology program, i of six, and equally a result, its funding increased into the millions, and the staff grew to 30. "The places that we've decided nosotros tin can take a pretty long-term expect and have on a fair bit of chance are in what nosotros call 'sustainable industries,'" says Scott Donnelly, senior VP for corporate R&D. "I accept a very hard fourth dimension thinking that people aren't going to demand energy xx years from now."

OLEDs nonetheless confront a long road. "You may first to see OLEDs showing up in niche architectural lighting in 8 to 10 years," says Kimberly Allen, the manager of applied science and strategic research for iSuppli/Stanford Resources, a market research firm. "Simply you won't run into something like flexible lighting for 15 or even 20 years." In fact, Allen says, the size of the OLED marketplace for general lighting is incommunicable to forecast because so many technical questions remain unanswered.

This isn't news to GE. Proving commercial viability becomes more of import as OLEDs develop. Scientists do their part through a process called "price gating," in which they incrementally tackle risks that a promising technology volition turn out to exist a dud. Correct at present, Duggal's team is at work on improving the brightness and duration of OLED lighting. In March 2004, they successfully demonstrated that their prototype could match a standard incandescent bulb'southward light output. But the ultimate goal is to produce an OLED about seven times better than that, superior to even fluorescents.

The other major hurdle is solving the production problems that would let you print OLEDs every bit you would a newspaper. OLEDs need to exist hermetically sealed to work. Today that's accomplished by sandwiching the OLED cloth between two layers of drinking glass. That's why it's premature to talk well-nigh coil-to-roll production. "In a manner, those lines I plotted that showed the potential of OLEDs were deceptive, because there were things missing — like manufacturing," says Duggal. "These are challenging problems. But nosotros can either be scared by them or discover a style to work around them."

While Duggal'due south team works on those problems, a business unit'due south sales and marketing teams get together input about the applied science from likely future customers. The internet event of this trip the light fantastic toe is that a applied science must continually prove its market mettle if it hopes to continue along GE's path from lab to market. In theory, that means no new GE engineering volition striking the marketplace unless in that location are customers already lined up.

How then does a engineering science like OLEDs not get lost in the strategic shuffle at a behemoth similar GE, with $134 billion in annual sales? The answer lies in the company'south yearly strategic planning process known as the Southward-1.

Independent within the consumer and industrial division's S-1 is a category labeled "innovation," under which projects autumn into one of two subcategories: big bets and breakthroughs. OLEDs are listed as a breakthrough now, pregnant they're still a corporate enquiry projection. One time technically feasible, OLEDs would probable move to a big bet, where funding and technical development get handed over to the concern unit. "If consumer and industrial were to go to corporate with their strategic programme and not accept OLEDs on in that location, Scott Donnelly and Jeff Immelt would inquire, 'Why are we investing in this technology if there doesn't seem to be a home for it in the future?'" says Todd Graves, the business program manager who is now responsible for shepherding OLEDs.

The final stage of the development process for a applied science like OLEDs comes when consumer and industrial's innovation team — a group created iv years agone to smooth a project'south transition from corporate inquiry to the business unit — hands it off to the new-product division. The scientists accept eliminated all the invention risks. Now some other team of engineers transforms the raw technology into a marketable product, a process that typically takes 12 to 18 months, according to Kevin Nolan, consumer and industrial's full general manager for new-product introductions.

Duggal realizes the claiming of always getting that far. "It'south very possible that OLEDs won't work," Duggal says coolly. "Of form I'd be disappointed. But if I wanted something easy, I wouldn't take taken them on. As a young scientist who goes into manufacture, instead of a academy, you want to change the world. I think OLEDs are something that can change the world." Edison couldn't have said it amend.

Fast Take: GE's Rules for Innovation

Recall Like Edison.

Thomas Edison was an inventor out to solve problems. Don't fix out to invent new technology merely for applied science's sake. Instead, define innovation in terms of a riddle you are seeking to solve.

Big ideas happen at the fringes.

Recruit and retain talent from a broad spectrum of technical capabilities. When large brains look at problems in a different way — for example, physicists taking on chemistry problems — that's when breakthroughs tin happen.

Make innovation pay its way.

Business units should pony up for research they actually want rather than headquarters doling out all of R&D'due south budget, hoping for a quantum. Give early funding only to a handful of promising technologies.

Set up intermediate goals.

When managing long-term innovation areas, periodically review technical milestones along the way to monitor progress. Prioritize the importance of each technical trouble to solve, then flake abroad one at a time.

Bet on the industry, not the engineering science.

GE can't predict ameliorate than anyone else about when, or even if, game-irresolute technologies will take off. But past focusing on an manufacture such every bit free energy, it can place big bets inside it in an effort to stay in the atomic number 82.

Ryan Underwood is a Fast Company staff writer.