ITHACA, N.Y. -- Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman of the board and CEO of General Electric Co., the world's most profitable industrial company, will give the 2004 Hatfield address, April 15 at 4:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall on the Cornell University campus. There will be overflow seating, and closed-circuit television viewing of the talk, in PepsiCo Auditorium, 305 Ives Hall.

The talk is free and open to the public.

Immelt, who in September 2001 succeeded Jack Welch in the top slot at GE, will deliver a talk titled "The Innovation Imperative." He will speak as the 24th Robert S. Hatfield Fellow in Economic Education, considered the highest honor the university bestows on distinguished individuals from the corporate sector. He comes to campus at the invitation of Cornell President Jeffrey Lehman as part of the Hatfield Fellows Program, which sponsors a yearly address on economic issues of national significance.

General Electric, now a $134.2 billion company offering products as varied as aircraft engines, financial services, medical imaging and plastics, has been in business for 126 years. Immelt, who is 48, is its ninth chairman. He believes that innovation is the key to growth in a slow-growth economy and has invested heavily in GE's research and development, including four research and development centers around the world.

Immelt was named "Man of the Year" in 2003 by the Financial Times for moving the company forward in the challenging post-Sept. 11 global economic environment. Citing GE's acquisitions of Vivendi Universal, the French-owned Hollywood studio, and Amersham International, the British medical diagnostic and bioscience company, the newspaper praised Immelt for "seeking growth in new and bold ways." Noting that GE was "an industrial colossus descended from the Edison Electric Light Company, which still supplies the lights for the White House Christmas tree," the business newspaper praised Immelt for making the firm a more nimble, innovative global player. Indeed, just this March GE moved to acquire the assets of AstroPower, a solar energy company, suggesting that Immelt sees growth potential in the promising, but so far unprofitable, alternative energy initiatives. Before being asked by GE's board of directors to head the company, Immelt was president and chairman-elect of GE. From 1997 to 2000, he was president and CEO of GE Medical Systems, which is today a $12 billion leader in the healthcare industry. He began his GE career in 1982. Over the past 22 years, he has held a series of global leadership roles in GE's plastics, appliance and medical businesses. He became an officer of GE in 1989 and joined the firm's capital board in 1997.

Immelt serves on the board of two nonprofit organizations: Catalyst, which seeks to advance women in business, and Robin Hood, which addresses poverty in New York City. He holds a B.A. degree in applied mathematics from Dartmouth College (1978) and an MBA from Harvard University (1982).

The Hatfield Fund for Economic Education was established in 1980 by the Continental Group Foundation to honor Robert S. Hatfield, then retiring chairman, president and CEO of the company and Cornell's first Hatfield speaker. Hatfield died last month in Greenwich, Conn.

This year's program headlines a celebration at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management, April 14-15, marking the 20th anniversary of the $20 million endowment gift of Samuel C. Johnson and his family to the school. In 1984, in gratitude for the Johnson family's generosity, the school was renamed in honor of Johnson's great-grandfather, namesake and the founder of the firm that is now the Johnson Family of Companies.

In addition, the Cornell Society of Engineers (CSE) is a sponsor of Immelt's Hatfield talk, which this year also serves as the William Ohaus Memorial Lecture, an endowed lecture in the College of Engineering. The lecture precedes a CSE conference, "Energy Demand and Sustainable Development: Pathways to Economic, Social and Environmental Improvement," that takes place on campus April 15-17.