American inventor Thomas Edison once said, “Not everything in life comes from books — experience the world.”

For Baker Hughes chief executive Lorenzo Simonelli, his experiences travelling the world with his parents from an early age helped shape his leadership approach.

“I was raised travelling around the world. And while I was educated in the UK, my parents took me to Africa and the US. Throughout my childhood I was fortunate to receive a global perspective, to really see globalisation and how it interconnects,” he says.

Born in Italy, his family moved to the UK when he was nine years old so that his father could continue his career in banking.

“I learned at an early age that the world functions better together, and the importance of diversity and inclusion of thoughts from different cultures," he says.

"It provided an opportunity to deal with ambiguity and the fast pace of change. It’s helped me in my leadership roles.”

After completing his degree in business and economics from Cardiff University, Simonelli took a corporate finance position at Mitsubishi Bank.

“Starting in corporate finance was a great way to learn how companies came together. It was a lot of paper-moving and understanding money, but not really seeing the operations,” Simonelli says.

He left corporate finance in 1994 to join GE.

“What I wanted to do was get into operations and actually create something and see it grow. And that is when I left banking and moved to General Electric, with the purpose of understanding how companies work and also how to grow them.”

Over the next couple of decades, Simonelli drew on his financial acumen, technical vision, and keen intelligence to become the president and chief executive of two GE divisions.

He holds the distinction of being GE's youngest division chief executive ever at age 34 when, in 2008, he took the reins at GE Transportation.

In 2013 he replaced transportation with energy, transitioning to the same role at GE Oil & Gas.

The company's 2017 merger with Baker Hughes presented Simonelli with the challenge of combining two historic oil patch brands under one larger umbrella.

While some at the time questioned the merger, Simonelli saw it as truly transformative for the companies and for the energy industry.

GE has since reduced its share in the company and a rebranded Baker Hughes has positioned itself as one of the world’s largest energy technology companies.

In remarks at GE Oil & Gas' annual meeting in 2017, while the merger was under way, Simonelli said: "Resilience, disruption, and collaboration will pave the road to recovery."

The industry at that time was just beginning to recover from one of the most difficult downturns it had ever faced.

Jump forward to today, and the same words apply in a world still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and the oil demand decimation it wrought in 2020.

Striking a balance

The challenge facing many industries and countries is how to strike a balance between the accelerating demands for energy with the growing need to reduce emissions.

“The pandemic has given rise to a bigger discussion on climate change, and on how we address it. China’s polluted skies before the pandemic were blue during it, for example. Or in Venice, the water was transparent for the first time in years. I think the focus on the environmental element will not turn back,” he says.

“At the same time, we do see in the short-to-medium term a recovery in the usage of oil and gas as the economy starts to recover. The need for energy, which will be predominantly hydrocarbon-based, will be increasing.”

The focus, Simonelli suggests, needs to be an immediate drive towards reducing the industry’s carbon dioxide and methane intensity using technologies available today.

The International Energy Agency claims that 37% of emissions reductions required by the Paris climate agreement can be achieved through efficiencies, and "capabilities we have today can support” that effort, he says.

That includes the use of digital technologies, which saw a rapid increase in pandemic.

“All of us being more familiar in the way in which we undertake our activities is key," Simonelli says.

"We saw the number of remote operations increase dramatically on the drilling services side. We’re now able to do global final acceptance testing with customers, and we are able to do audits virtually,” he adds.

Partnership and collaboration among all stakeholders will be crucial as nations enact policies to promote cleaner energy systems, Simonelli says.

“We have to look at things from a beginning to end point, and we must continue to encourage the deployment of natural gas in our energy mix, as renewables continue to grow," he says.

"We must work as a combined stakeholder ecosystem to actually make the right decisions.”

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'The world functions better together': Simonelli brings a global perspective to Baker Hughes role