In spotlighting these impressive features of the company, Immelt and the GE message machine wove strands of rhetoric that imbued its underlying businesses with a greater purpose, an association with genius. The turbines and engines and the factories in which they were made were not just impressive, but “brilliant.” The company’s business strength lay not so much in the designing, building, and selling of intricate machines, but in the feats of imagination that conjured them into being.
