“We are just beginning our transformation as the Digital Industrial Company.” So says General Electric Chairman of the Board and CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt in the “GE 2015 Integrated Summary Report” published on March 14, 2016. This marks the first time the company has published an integrated report and making it one of the few U.S. companies (e.g., Clorox, Entergy, and Jones Lang Lasalle) to do so.

In an unusually long and informative “Chairman’s Letter” Immelt discusses the moves that the company is making to become a major player in the “Industrial Internet,” offering “the next great wave of productivity for both our company and for the customers we serve.” As part of this transformation, the $130 billion high-tech industrial leader decided to sell its massive GE Capital business (representing about half of the company and around 60% of its earnings growth from 1990-2005), completed its acquisition of the French industrial giant Alstom’s power and grid business (its largest industrial acquisition ever), and is now making big investments in China (with near-term goals of $10 billion in revenues and $10 billion in sourcing). “We are a company that invests in broad industrial transitions, and they don’t come much bigger than the full application of data and analytics to machines and systems,” wrote Immelt.

The increasing importance of these other capitals might lead one to believe that integrated reporting is basically more reporting. This is decidedly not the case, as is clear from the example of GE. In introducing the report, Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt states:

Public company reporting has become so complicated that what matters to investors can get lost. Our priority is to provide meaningful information that all investors can readily access. For investors to make investment and voting decisions, we don’t believe that more information is necessarily better. Instead, we’ve challenged ourselves to provide better information. Over the past several years, we have already been enhancing our reporting in response to feedback from investors, and they have told us how much they like it. This year, we are taking it even further with our new Integrated Summary Report.

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