I found the story they give about GE forgetting how to make water heaters interesting. The line you usually hear about startups creating their core technologies in house and outsourcing non core things comes to mind.
Was GE originally known for manufacturing (or ability to manufacture) and then lost that core ability? If they did, what would their core ability be after outsourcing, management of manufacturing? Maybe I'm not making a good connection there, but I think it could be.
I find dark humor in that we've lost such crucial skills. In the US, we've nearly lost the technology to create water heaters, but can definitely make fart apps.
On a lighter note, maybe this will reintroduce some needed humility to American culture. It's easy to forget that each item we touch, everything we use, was put together by another human's hands. Soldering together the proto shield for my Arduino deeply touched me, reminding me that every resistor and LED and processor in my laptop was soldered in by another human.
I may be romanticizing it, or maybe I'm just getting old, but I'm starting to appreciate objects crafted by humans more than those generated by machines.
They conveniently split their balance sheet between GE Capital and GE (industrial/manufacturing). Roughly 70% revenue and profit from non-financial (mainly manufacturing - from 747 engines, to trains, to energy, to MRI machines, etc), ~30% from GE Capital.
So yeah, always have been and still very much a manufacturing company.
As a more general answer to your question, in case you missed it, there was a good article and discussion a while back on companies losing manufacturing through outsourcing, and its consequences:
TLDR: “So the decline of manufacturing in a region sets off a chain reaction. Once manufacturing is outsourced, process-engineering expertise can’t be maintained, since it depends on daily interactions with manufacturing. Without process-engineering capabilities, companies find it increasingly difficult to conduct advanced research on next-generation process technologies. Without the ability to develop such new processes, they find they can no longer develop new products. In the long term, then, an economy that lacks an infrastructure for advanced process engineering and manufacturing will lose its ability to innovate.”
An interesting counterexample that demonstrates the point is Intel - they've maintained their manufacturing capability, and as a result lead the world in lithography and process technology, a competitive advantage that allowed them to compete with AMD in the mid-to-late 2000s even when AMD's chip designs were better, and to dominate AMD now that both Intel's process technology and chip designs are better.
Andy Grove has apparently dedicated his retirement to advocating for reshoring manufacturing for the deep competitive advantage it confers [1].
FWIIW, GE Capital was closer to 50% of the revenue before the recession kicked them in the teeth. Hard. Indications and rumors had it that GE Capital nearly took the company down in the 2008/2009 time frame.
GE has essentially been a mix of holding company and leveraged buyout firm for a long time now. I think of GE as a stock trader who takes really, really long positions in an industry as a whole by acquiring a subsidiary in the industry rather than buying the corresponding index fund.
GE is/was one of the best manufacturing firms in the US. The "Lean" in "Lean Startup" comes from "Lean Manufacturing". GE probably did more to innovate in Lean Manufacturing (and Six Sigma) than any other company in the US.
Was GE originally known for manufacturing (or ability to manufacture) and then lost that core ability? If they did, what would their core ability be after outsourcing, management of manufacturing? Maybe I'm not making a good connection there, but I think it could be.