How to Foster Breakthrough Innovation 3m Way

How to Foster Breakthrough Innovation 3M Way

Innovation at its Core

3M's innovation culture comes from the times when the five entrepreneurs who created a company to explore a mine of what they thought being corundum, realized that all they had was a low grade anorthosite, which would not meet the requirements of the booming abrasive industry as they initially believed. Quickly they had to adapt and focus on producing sandpaper products. But it was with McKnight, who joined the company in 1907 has a bookkeeper and later would become Chairman for more than 40 years, that 3M really developed a culture towards systematic innovation. Since then, 3M has been characterized by McKnight's principles of supportive management which encourages employee initiative and innovation:

"Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs. Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative."

One of the executive's greatest contributions to innovation is to shape the organization's culture in ways that make it more radical innovation a more natural, accepted and valued activity. Dick Drew, one of the most innovative researchers in 3M history, had that impact on 3M, and though many of the employees at 3M are too young to have any personal recollections from him, his influence on 3M's innovation culture remains profound and his principles are cited regularly in breakthroughs.

Innovation as a process

Entrepreneurship and Intrapreneurship has been an essential part of 3M culture. Evolutionary spin-offs have developed a key role in 3M's growth. 3M also fosters innovation by allowing the formation of both formal and informal new venture teams. These teams, which are composed by manufacturing, engineering and marketing full-time volunteers, have the ability to stay together if a product proves to be successful. These may represent the first steps towards a new business unit. New venture teams are ruled by the principle of start small, learn how a business works and then expand "make a little, sell a little".

Each division is managed as an individual company. This decentralization into small and autonomous business units allows them to minimize bureaucracy and concentrate on new ideas and their own customer base. Typically, the creation of a business unit is the result of the consolidation of a new product team. When a 3Mer has an idea for a new product, he or she recruits a team of members from technical areas, manufacturing, marketing and sales. The team designs the product and plans how to manufacture market and sell it. Individuals in parts of 3M now use strategic narratives in their planning processes, not only to clarify the thinking behind their plans hut also to capture the imagination and the excitement of the people in their organizations. All members of the team grow according to the project growth. Some of them become departments, some become divisions, while their project leaders become department managers or division managers. As a result, although 3M is big it acts small.

Covert research by 3Mers is winked at. Bootleggers - those who surreptitiously keep new product programs alive after they were supposed to have died - are the bad boys everyone loves at 3M. Lewis Lehr became a corporate legend by ignoring an order to stop producing the surgical drapes that eventually became a big moneymaker. Because it tolerates mavericks, 3M attracts mavericks. "We don't even to need to look for them, explained Lehr after becoming 3M's CEO."They'll find us if we let them."

Accepting mistakes and talking about accidents is all about fun and business at 3M. At 3M they say, "The captain bites his lip until it bleeds," meaning that once managers put their money on a project, they back off. This reduces error-o-phobia among innovators and allows them to pursue their own productive mistake making. 3M is like a shrine of products developed by accident. A failed bra cup became a successful surgeon's mask. So-so surgical tape morphed into superb household tape. Accidents occur every day in all organizations. Usually they are ignored or hushed up. At 3M, Spencer Silver spread the word about his goof in hopes someone else might find a way to use it. Art Fry did. . Richard Carlton quoted about mistakes as:

"We've made a lot of mistakes. And we've been very lucky at times. Some of our products are things you might say we've just stumbled on. But, you can't stumble if you're not in motion."

Customer drives innovation process at 3M. It has a strong commitment to develop products driven by the marketplace. Since its early days that 3M realized that in order to create products that really satisfy the customers needs, both sales representatives and technical people had to be in frequent contact with the customers where the products were being used. It was again McKnight as a Sales Manager who understood that a salesman would have a better chance of providing competitive products if he could get into the factory floors, talk to the workmen who used those products, and understand exactly what were his needs and explain him how 3M products were superior to the competition. This way 3M identifies the customer problems, anticipate their needs and develop innovative