Of course, GE is not dead, and it may well revive and flourish as a company. After all, IBM came back from the dead in the 1990s. But the GE model is dead.

The GE conglomerate combined a wide range of industrial businesses under one roof. Unlike a pure holding company or a modern hedge fund, the GE model intended to create value by actively sharing capabilities among its disparate businesses, which, with one important exception, were all rooted in manufacturing.

The model was honed in the 1980s and 1990s, with new portfolio restructuring strategies and a headlong expansion into finance. GE tried to keep this model alive in the face of new threats in the 2000s. It is not put to rest by selling off all but a core of relatively closely related businesses.

Find out the long list of possible suspect in this article from Harvard Business Review.