The Gold Standard of Innovation Systems

Learning from the way 3M does innovation

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

When one mentions practical innovation in the corporate, one name that always stands out is 3M. 3M have become synonymous with the ideals of successful innovation. Once known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, 3M have grown to become a multinational conglomerate corporation with 76 thousand employees operating in 60 countries. 3M produce 55,000 products that range from chemicals to electronic devices and sold in more than 200 countries.

So what is the secret behind 3M’s success?

Mentioned in a 3m-innovation forum I had attended, one of the key strength is that 3M does not subscribe to the practice of having leading project managers to take charge of a project from beginning to end. Figure 1 shows the two main innovation pathways which 3M takes to bring the mind to market. Instead of a single manager pushing an idea through, there are individual gatekeepers at each segment indeed responsible to push or pull or drop the project.

An analogy of this is that mainstream companies are ideas craftsman while 3M is an idea factory. Like craftsman of old, a single person sees through mainstream idea production. A manager sees it from start to end. While 3M ideas production follows the industrial model…