General Electric Company’s College Innovation Tour came to Northeastern last week asking students to give their opinions about the importance of innovation in today’s society and the role they see it playing in their futures.

“We wanted to focus on young people and we needed a diverse student body, so Northeastern seemed like a good choice,” said Ted Birkhahn, a manager with the tour. “GE realizes that college students are the future and that we need to start talking to them more.”

The GE Tour set up in the Snell Library Quad last Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day and spoke with as many Northeastern students they could. Those working with the tour gave out free smoothies, t-shirts and Frisbees to students who stopped to fill out surveys. The representatives of GE also asked students to write their thoughts about innovation on the giant “Innovation Postcard,” nearing 10 feet tall and 12 feet wide. The postcard, with more than 250 comments from NU students, will be sent to the Tech Museum of Innovation in Silicon Valley, San Jose, Calif. There, visitors will be able to see the comments written by students and respond to them.

“If GE gets ideas from this that betters the company’s innovation than that is a great by-product, but our main intention is to reach out to college-level students and get young people more invested in innovation,” Birkhahn said. “We want to extend beyond the norm and generate creativity to better situations for the future.”

Students who stopped at the tour to talk with the GE representatives were asked how they see innovation employed in technology, education, healthcare and a plethora of other areas, as well as how the United States compares to other nations in these areas.

“Compared to countries in Asia, like Japan or China, I’d say we’re behind them,” said Gary Chan, a sophomore computer engineering major. “But compared to most countries around the world we are a little above average.”

Other NU students said that the U.S. is ahead of the game as far as innovation is concerned.

“You’ve got cable news. Fox is quality,” said Felix Rickerson, a junior chemistry major. “You can’t be more innovative than making up your own news.”

Birkhahn said that while they were pleasantly surprised with the ideas offered by NU students and their willingness to interact with those on the tour, the Northeastern faculty provided them with the best and most active response of any college the tour visited.

“The great thing about this tour and the postcard is that it is completely interactive and gives students the ability to create their own content,” Birkhahn said.