FirstBuild, an innovation arm of GE Appliances, operates with a unique product development lifecycle, leveraging community and crowdfunding to rapidly test and launch new gadgets like nugget ice makers and pizza ovens. This episode highlights how FirstBuild sidesteps corporate bureaucracy to maintain agility, offering key lessons for ecommerce operators on fostering innovation, rapid prototyping, and diverse distribution strategies—from Amazon to big-box retail—within or alongside a larger organization.
FirstBuild is the arm of GE Appliances where inventors actually get to invent things. It's a division of the behemoth corporation that aims to come up with new types of gadgets, test their viability and then bring them into the world. And it operates independently of its parent, GE Appliances, and uses community building and crowdfunding to get projects off the ground. Some of its most popular products include a nugget ice maker and countertop pizza oven. So, how such a division exist within such a large corporation? André Zdanow, FirstBuild's president, joined the Modern Retail Podcast and described its evolution. FirstBuild first began around 2014 as a way to work with upstart engineers and test out new types of products. But it has grown into a standalone organization, and each product has its own unique lifecycle. Some are built thanks to successful crowdfunding campaigns, others are instantly scooped by GE Appliances because they know it will be a hit. Some products are sold through an Amazon store, others on Amazon or via big-box retailers. As Zdanow described it, each FirstBuild product "depends on the product and the business that's gonna take it and the business model." But the major difference between Zdanow's group and GE Appliances as a whole is the process. The idea, he said, was to "get away from the bureaucracy of a large corporate; there are a lot of things that are great about the scale you get when you become our size, or near our size. And one of those things is not speed." Zdanow knows a thing or two about building products fast. Before joining GE Appliance, he worked at Quirky, a platform that aimed to help inventors get their ideas off the ground. Lessons from Quirky's early days likely informed how FirstBuild got off the ground, but Zdanow said the two are different -- especially in the types of community members it targets. And now that FirstBuild has been around for over a decade, it's been able to create an insulated nook of innovation. The