3M: Profile of an Innovating Company

By Syndicate 5 (MBA X 47)

Martadinata (29112122); RohimatEfendi (29112132); Sufian (29112017); Meilina M. (29112120); Reza A. Pahla (29112127)

3M is a global innovation company that has remained for its long-term innovation history and successes. The root of 3Ms success is its business model; to foster organic growth by inventing entirely new, market-changing products. 3M takes a long-term approach to the new product development process by creating a culture of innovation that encourages risk-taking, tolerates mistakes made along the way, and rewards achievement. 3Ms Management encourages employees to spend a significant portion of their time on products and research that go beyond their usual scope of responsibilities. Another way 3M capitalizes on its innovation success is by combining diverse technologies in new and unexpected ways. By making these uncommon connections, the company pioneers new ways of innovating.

Learning Points:
1. 3M from the very beginning has learned from hard truth of their worthless mineral product and the history also has proven that they can survive by taking advantage from failure become innovation. 2. 3M Innovation is driven by a system of principles, practices and infrastructure that harness the chain reaction of new ideas. 3. Open innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology. 4. The work of outstanding technical employees is recognized by the 3M Carlton Society; this is voted on by peers. 5. Now other companies produce sticky or repositionable notes, but the term "Post-it" and the canary yellow color are trademarks of 3M. 6. The uniqueness of 3M (doing things only 3M can do) is that they are able to transform technology into customer brands; they called it connecting technology to customer anywhere and everywhere. 7. Technology at 3M is owned and leveraged by all. Shared Technology Is The Heart of New Product Innovation. 8. 3M Employees has been given Freedom through Responsibility from the Management. Initiatives on creativity were a Pillar on 3M innovation philosophy. 9. Innovation always has a risk. Failure on innovation is common happen in 3M, but the mistake shouldnt kills employees initiatives, on 3M it was called well-intentioned failure. 10. Innovation is conducted with institutionalized to make it sustainable, both in information and resources.

Lesson learned: - Based on the Management Concept 1. Innovation Innovation could come from accident-unexpected and surprising things which offer new direction for innovation. 3M Companycreate post it note accidentally. And this product has sold in million for the past 70 years Innovation was driven not only by matching technology to costumer needs, but also because it represented the first step on a voyage of diversification that was to lead the company far from its simple abrasive and adhesive origin. Innovation through council and department. When innovation becomesa major thing in the company, they need one place to collect. In this case, 3M build the central Research Laboratory (CRL) to leverage and expand this expertise. The opportunity in the process of developing was generated by both external and internal capability. Externally, expanding product application led to new customer needs that created new development opportunity. Learning by mistakes, can be the one of to continue the management of innovation. Mistakes will be made, but if person is essentially right, the mistakes he/she makes are not serious in the long run as the mistakes management. R & D do not centralized but spread to every sector of the business. Consequently, the resulting innovations have profound dimensions and able to meet the needs far ahead.

2. Marketing Management - One method of marketing strategy recently is new wave marketing, which focus on what the consumer need, what kind of product the make customer satisfied. 3M is taking the product directly to customer front line operations that will help develop new application. 3 M salesforce also continue to relay customer needs to the companys expanding lab, then the technician adapted the abrasive and tape product line to a variety of applications Marketing philosophy on 3M was integrated both internal external of the company. Internally, the culture encouraged employees to recognize how existing products, processes, or technologies could be leveraged into new market opportunities. Externally, expanding product applications led to new customer need that created new development opportunities. And it well supported by management by creating several council as sharing knowledge forum.

Sharing knowledge, Opportunity, Product development Innovations

3. PIO organizational Behavior - When we talk about organizational, of course we will talk about behavior or culture inside. The culture or corporate culture is always created by management. Similar with 3M, management especially CEO, McKnight create a climate that stimulates ordinary people to produce extraordinary performance. He created corporate culture that encourages people innovation and initiative. - In PIO, learn much about reward and achievement. In this case, 3M show achievement was rewarded not only by promotion but also by recognition. The greatest achievement for 3M scientist for example was to be inducted into the Carlton Society, an honor reserved for those who had made the most exceptional scientific and technical contributions to the company. - Dual Ladder carrier in 3 M (Achievement and recognition) was enough giving motivation to their employee to focus and pursuing their professional interest to drive company lead on wide / differentiation products markets. - Individual entrepreneurship philosophy on 3M employees was encouraged by management to pursue employee ideas. 3M was thinking their self as a creative company that needs a high level of technology. The employee ways on making creativity always think about value and benefit indeed for goods and company, and growth policy was express as make a little, sell a little. 4. Knowledge Management - Communication and sharing knowledge is 3Ms secret weapon. Management at 3M has long encouraged networking -- formal and informal -- among its researchers. - One the important of make some innovation is knowledge sharing. The pace and scope of this development product was possible only because members of 3M research community recognized the value of sharing their knowledge. - On of the way of sharing knowledge is by tacit to explicit or explicit to tacit. In 3M, they organized the annual technology fair, a three days internal event in which 3M s scientist showcased their latest finding.

The culture of sharing knowledge become a best way when every department in charge with that. McKnight felt that a continuing exchange of ideas between employees in sales, manufacturing, and research will give company tripod like stability

5. Business Law - One of things to protect the innovation is covered by patent. 3M had obtained worldwide patent protection for Wet-or-dry Sandpaper. It is need when 3M need to expand their market into the international market 6. Operation Management - As 3M portfolio of products and technology grew, they hardly found operation increasingly difficult to manage. But one of CEO James McNarney introduces Six sigma to decrease production defects and increase efficiency

Based on Self Experiences: Meilina M.,in Pharmaceutical Industry: From this 3M case study, I also learn much about accidentally innovation with come through unexpected in any where and anytime. Sometimes to create new product in my company, I do look around in environment to see what the biggest opportunity could come. Creativity comes from a good climate of corporate culture. We need a support from management to bring the innovation through the business cooperation. Create a new product is align with the cooperation vision and management thinking. Same with 3M, management create corporate culture that encourages people innovation and initiative.

Rohimat E., in Agricultural Industry (vegetable seed company) : Innovation in my company is a vital factor on company growth. Competition on vegetable seed industry now is getting tight, now there is a lot of company who play on this industry, local company or multinational company, both research company or trading company (sales only). Product characteristic and requirements is always changing due to climate challenge and market requirements. As a research company, we do innovation through breeding activity by our scientists to create new product and development. On breeding activity our breeder doing research based on research planning, and to decide research planning need strong update information holistically (sharing knowledge) from all operation department (R&D, Marketing, Production and processing) about what kinds future product development will needed. Management support both tangible and intangible is very important because on research activity is need big effort and investment to do that. On creating new products it needs time approximately 3 4 years to do. The differences with 3Ms innovation are only our researchers are not so free to do innovation, because on our innovation it should be focus and systematically to do.

Sufian, in Non-Government Organization (NGO): One of my responsibilities (job description) in the organization is giving training for internal staff and others (partners and beneficiaries). For example, the training of proposal writing (the contents of training modules are: needs analysis, logical framework, problem tree, SWOT, etc.). The challenge is that participant can be wide range, from youngster to golden age and places in urban and rural area. So I need to contextualize those contents of training modules (delivery system) to each local context in North Sumatera, DKI Jakarta, West Java, Central Java, East Java, Bali and NTT. We can call it as innovation in communication or perhaps (adaptation) improvement to connect to local people. Other adjustment maybe needed such as using technology (electronic multimedia) or practical activity using papers, interactive games, focused group discussion, etc. This is not an easy task because we need to learn about social culture, communication techniques, ethics, community behavior, and other survey.

Martadinata, in Syariah Banking: Establishment of R & D institution in HIK Group is different with 3M. This difference is caused by all the HIK Group's subsidiaries are homogeneous (Islamic micro banking) while 3M Consist of four business sectors (heterogeneous). Government Regulation limits the business expansion just in one province (geography area) for BPR Syariah. When the business develops in nation-wide, a subsidiary should be built in every province and there are same sector. That's why the choice to build R & D is different with 3M. However, R & D is still expected to have orientation on the market and customers. Now HIK Group in Islamic banking micro Become the biggest in Indonesia.

Reza Pahla, in Culinary Business: Innovation and creativity happens really fast in culinary business. Mostly, it is driven by tight competition. Especially in Bandung which known as city of creative industry, new product of culinary could show up in any minutes. From my experiences I have learn that product differentiation is the key to commercial success. My main products specialize in fresh water fish. In order to attract customer, I must serve an alternative menu that different from my main product because not everybody have favors on fish. Therefore, I have to do some research on what kind of food being a trend on a market at people loves. I do make some innovation or modification on the recipe and create some products that align with my core product which features in Sundanese taste.