MINNESOTA MINING and MANUFACTURING (3M) MBA Tech
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SVKM͛S NMIMS UNIVERSITY MUKESH PATEL SCHOOL OF TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT & ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT OF INNOVATION CASE STUDY MINNESOTA MINING AND MANUFACTURING (3M) MBA Tech. 4th Year (I.T), Shirpur By Rewat Singh Fageria Arpit Grover Uday Mittal Anubhav Saksena Sameer Tayal 1 | P a g e Table of Contents Serial No. Topic Page No. 1 The radical innovations 2 2 The incremental innovations 3 3 Was it a disruptive/radical innovation? 4 4 Dimensions of innovations 6 5 Categorization in the 4p¶s model 7 6 Process of innovation 8 7 Phase gate model 9 8 Drivers for the innovations 10 9 Discontinuity Triggers 10 Strategy Adopted 11 References 2 | P a g e What are radical innovations? Radical innovation is building a product or service that would have a revolutionary effect on the market and is often disruptive for the players in that market. A radically innovative product would have an entirely set on new features (e.g. Post-it) or major improvements on features of an existing product (e.g. Scotch Brite) or has a significant (30%) reduction in cost (e.g. Scotch Permanent Glue Stick, 3M Surgical masks). They may have competency destroying effects on an established organization. Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing or 3M, as they are known to the world, has been introducing radically innovative products for more than 100 years now. Their strategy to deal with radical innovation is based in following: y Setting stretch targets - such as µx% of sales from products introduced during the past y years¶ y Allocating resources as slack - space and time in which staff can explore and play with ideas, build on chance events or combinations, etc. y Encouragement of µbootlegging¶ of employees working on innovation projects in their own time and often accessing resources in a non-formal way y Provision of staged resource support for innovators who want to take an idea forward Over the years, 3M has developed immunity towards external radical innovators by developing an internal support system for their own innovators. Every employee at 3M is considered to be a µskunkworker¶ ± allowed to work in their own way- thus giving them no chance to look outside the window to implement their product. Take for example the story behind Scotch Tape. The inventor, Richard Drew, came up with the idea of masking tape from the glued newspaper strips while he was working on creating a new and crinkly backing material for sandpaper. Though his instructions, at that time, were to give his entire focus on the sandpaper project but he simultaneously kept working on the masking tape. Due to him the management adapted ³get-out-of-the-way´ attitude for the innovators of the organization. Later he went on to launch the Scotch brand as a subsidiary of 3M. Art Fry, the Post it inventor, got the idea of Post it while he was singing in a church choir where his bookmark kept falling. He the used the 3M¶s µbootlegging¶ policy to solve his problem and now the world is singing praises of Post it Notes. Now, the Post it brand has been extended to digital world in form of Post it Digital Notes. 3M has also been innovating over its innovation process. Recently, in their Medical-Surgical-Division, they launched the µLead User Research¶ program as a way to innovate and develop a new breakthrough surgical drape product. A team of lead users which included a veterinarian surgeon, a makeup artist, doctors and military medics was assembled. The lead users were interviewed so as to gain insight into how they solve the problem for themselves. The lead users were then queried to determine whether they have knowledge of individuals or organizations that were considered to be ³outside the market´. From the result of both the lead users and the outside-the-market users, 3M identified new methods or approaches towards creating innovative surgical drape products that are true breakthroughs that may not have surfaced by simply examining existing users with traditional market research techniques. 3 | P a g e What are the incremental innovations? Incremental Innovation refers to the process of continuous improvement on a product. It is an evolutionary process of innovation wherein a product is taken through the stages of innovation again and again to get a product with improved features or reduced cost or both. Cycle of Innovation The incremental innovation runs in the background of every 3M product be it sandpapers, surgical masks or Scotch brands. Though these products are radically innovated but radical innovation alone is not enough to support an organization as big as 3M. Incremental Innovation comes at the bottom of the pyramid and thus not appears ³sexy´ (as quoted by 3M CEO George Buckley) to the innovators of 3M. They seem to be turned on by what is on top of the pyramid ³the new innovative products´ that brings out the creativity. However, the CEO sees this in a little different way. His approach towards motivating his employees to follow incremental innovation is to make them understand how ³bringing innovation where it is next to impossible´ is more challenging to the mind. Once he¶s able to get this into their brain, the employees said ³bring us volume we¶ll give you expansion´. The main hurdle here for Buckley was to make something interesting where people saw none at all. The earliest incrementally innovative product from 3M is the Aluminium Oxide Sandpaper for use on wood, metals etc. 3M Sandpaper dates back to the birth of the company itself and its been in market ever since. 3M made continuous improvements to the quality of the sandpaper and reducing the cost at the same time. Another famous product from 3M is Post it Notes. Post it Notes was invented by Art Fry in 1970. Though it was a radically innovated product but it has been under continuous development. The recent in this line of product is the Post is Digital Notes. Post it Digital Notes is a software created by 3M Technologies to simulate its paper counterpart for use on computers. The major field where 3M has used the concept of Incremental Innovation is Health Care. 3M DuraPrep, 3M Steri-Drape, 3M Steri-Drape 2, Surgical Tapes etc. are the well-known products from this category. Though the launch of these products was year back but 3M still is the market leader here because these products have passed the cycle of innovation many times in the R&D labs of 3M. The latest product to go through this cycle is Surgical Mask. 3M, in about a month, will be launching the low cost surgical masks with better quality. Thus 3M applies incremental innovation not only to its products but also to the processes which go into making of those products. 4 | P a g e Was it a Disruptive/Radical Innovation? Innovations that are radical in nature reinforce the incumbent¶s position in a certain industry. This is very well understood by 3M Company. 3M Company is a company whose very identity is built on Innovations. 3M Company is the birth place of masking tape, Thinsulate and the Post-it-note. Radical Innovation requires completely new knowledge and/or resources and thus, is competence destroying. Whereas, Disruptive Innovation is an improvement or advancement that enhances a service or a product in a manner that has never been expected by the market. 3M Company developed a Non- drying Tape which made the two-tone paint application very easy. It was a radical innovation as no one earlier, had thought about a tape that would stick tightly and yet could be pulled off cleanly without leaving residue or taking away the paint with it in case of car paints. In few years, 3M Company came up in 1930 with a Scotch Cellophane tape which were useful for railroad refrigerator cars. The Scotch Cellophane tape almost stole the whole market from Du Pont who had come up with a moisture proof material in early 1900s as a packaging wrap. Scotch cellophane tape became one of the most famous and widely used products of 3M Company. There were many just Radical Innovations done by 3M and they keep on getting new products from the existing products as a result of constant Incremental Innovation. Their Radical Innovations lead them to conquer more and more market share. 3M Company invests heavily in the Research & Development department in order to encourage the employees to come up with something new and extra-ordinary which has not been thought off yet. In 1980s, 3M made another radical innovation by introducing Post-it Notes which were designed for temporarily attaching notes to documents and other surfaces. Post-it Notes gave people¶s communication and organization behavior a new dimension. Post-it Notes was a strong enough adhesive to stick to most of the surfaces and yet weak enough to come off without causing any kind of damage to those surfaces. This adhesive product affected the adhesive industry and made it more convenient for the people to communicate between themselves. Post-It notes are also very convenient to carry and leave notes for others. Dr. Spencer Silver was responsible for more than 20 radical innovations at 3M including the Post-It Notes. Most of the innovations of 3M Company were Radical Innovations. 5 | P a g e Dimensions of Innovation Innovation is a very human activity, which can occur along many dimensions. These correspond to the dimensions of human activity itself. The Physical Dimension includes the environment created along with the support for and response to individual needs. 3M does this by encouraging the broad perspective and supporting an individual by giving them a sense of empowerment and by providing rigid bureaucratic procedures to the creative ideas that the staff members come up with.