INNOVATION

PROCESS AT 3M,
GOOGLE AND GE
A Suggested Innovation Framework

Problem
and/or
Opportunity
3M

Formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and

Manufacturing Company
Founded on the North Shore of Lake Superior at
Two Harbors, Minnesota in 1902
With over 76,000 employees they produce over
55,000 products, including: adhesives, abrasives,
laminates, passive fire protection, dental products,
electrical materials, electronic circuits and optical
3M How do they manage innovation?

The company presents a consistent picture in interviews and

in publications innovation success is a consequence of
creating the culture in which it can take place it becomes
the way we do things around here in a very real sense. This
philosophy is born out in many anecdotes and case histories
the key to their success has been to create the conditions in
which innovation can arise from any one of a number of
directions, including lucky accidents, and there is a
deliberate attempt to avoid putting too much structure in
place since this would constrain innovation.
The 3M way to innovation: Balancing people and
profit. New York, Kodansha International.
3M Innovation Strategy and Leadership

Setting stretch targets such as x% of sales from products

introduced during the past y years provides a clear and consistent
message and a focus for the whole organization.
Allocating resources as slack space and time in which staff can
explore and play with ideas, build on chance events or
combinations, etc.
Encouragement of bootlegging employees working on innovation
projects in their own time and often accessing resources in a non-
formal way the benevolent blind eye effect.
Provision of staged resource support for innovators who want to
take an idea forward effectively different levels of internal
venture capital for which people can bid (against increasingly high
Open Innovation

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.
The boundaries between a firm and its
environment have become more permeable;
innovations can easily transfer inward and
outward.
 Open Innovation at 3M

Idea Generation Selection ExecutionCommercialization

Ideas and
innovations
from inside the
organisation

Select Prototypes Product

Develop
Successful and brought
New ideas
Ideas Production to market

Technology
Licensing

Spin-offs
Technology

Licensing
Licensing

OUT
IP
IN
IN

IP

patents and
innovations
from outside the
organisation

7
Capabilities and Products

8
Open Innovation

The way it allows ideas to cross-pollinate - No employee is

restricted to one business, and each business must leverage the
entire company to be successful.
3Ms abrasives division recently developed a new kind of sandpaper
using seven different technologiesonly two of which came from
the abrasives division itself.
The way it collaborates with customers. In 30 customer
technology centers around the world, technical and marketing
employees meet with customers and share 3Ms technology
platforms.
The way its culture leads the way. Technical people at 3Ms
corporate lab devote 15% of their time to projects outside their
responsibility. Since leaders have grown up in the culture, they
continue to nurture it.
INNOVATION @ GOOGLE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmuUvn4YjDM
How does a company like Google continue to
grow exponentially while still staying
innovative?

Google realized that to maintain its growth, the company had

to come out with new products/features but the problem was
how to convert ideas into a successful product
To overcome this problem google came up with a solution
through a program called sparrow
In this program googlers can create web pages with their new
ideas which in turn enabled everyone to test those ideas
After feasible and user friendly ideas were selected , they
were brought up for discussion where the engineer whose idea
was selected was given 10 minutes to present his idea
If he/she was successful in defending the idea , then it would
be turned into a product with the project headed by the
Googler who presented it.
In 2002 Google launched Google labs, which allowed the
public to test and provide feedback to new product/technology,
this helped the company to identify the bad ideas fast and
discard them fast
CHANNELS
Google Cafes
Direct emails
Google Moderator
TGIF
Google Universing Ticketing Systems
Fixits
Internal Innovation reviews
Earn : 95% of Googles revenue comes from advertising. It's
really a B2B network that lets a closed loop of business
customers target Google users through ads.

Entice & Defend : Google provides an addictive mix of free (or

cheap) utilities that increases the number of users, frequency of
visits, or duration of stay on a Google property. Google defends
its properties against competitors that might steal usagetime.
Facebook, Spotify, Netflix, iPhone and Twitter have forced
Android, Google+, and Play into existence to defend
Google's its share of internet time.

Expand the Pie:Google promotes conversion from cash and

checks to digital transactions, regardless of platform ,means
expanding leisure time. Ex. Google Glass , Self driving cars.

Experiment: The experiments range from Google X labs,

which incubates top-secret R&D projects, to all employees who
are encouraged to use 20% of their time to work on anything
they like.
 Future
Google - Biggest company in the group and covers all the
Internet related activities (Youtube, Chrome, Maps, Android,
etc)
.
Google X - The most innovative branch, like the R&D
department. It has given birth to are the Google Glass, Project
Loon, Google driverless car ,Project Wing etc
.
Google Capital : It aggregates all the investing activities of the
company. The voracity of Google to acquire companies justifies
a specific branch for this activity within the holding.

Nest: Google acquired a startup and it mainly deals with

Internet of Things and Smart home appliances.

Google Fiber : Google is deploying ultra-fast Internet access

on demand service to cities.

Calico : Research and development company whose mission

is to harness advance technologies to increase the
understanding of the biology that controls lifespan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROAP3YNWUyQ
 Innovation at GE

GE follows an Open Innovation Manifesto

Helps to address customer needs more efficiently and effectively
Openness leads to inventiveness and usefulness.
Crowdsourcing innovationboth internally and externally
Sourcing and supporting innovative ideas, wherever they might come
from, and applying GEs scale and expertise
Strive to collaborate with experts and entrepreneurs everywhere who
share their passion to solve some of the worlds most pressing issue
GE is improving customer value and driving advancements across
industries
GE Innovation Philosophy
GE believes in initiating a fundamental shift in the way they do
business - this is what theyll stand for in their open collaboration
efforts and how they will operate.
Customer focus, imagination, courage, expertise, inclusiveness,
and clear thinking guides their collaborative effort.
Openly celebrate the efforts of lead solvers who have submitted
winning solutions within the public collaborations.
Collaborate with transparency publishing evaluation criteria,
rules, compensation and IP rights at the launch of engagements.
Ideas should be compensated - and compensation pools will
always reflect level of impact, effort, commercialization risk and IP
rights.
Access to pools of IP to enable the Global Brain to create new and
beneficial outcomes.
Never stop experimenting, collaborating and learning Get
smarter as you go, and the Global Brain will evolve and grow with
us.
Innovation Process at GE
Identify the trends shaping the business landscape.
Every year the company surveys whats happening in the world around it.
This information then shapes how it will proceed with its growth and
innovation efforts. This year, the company identified the rise of
emerging markets, infrastructure growth, large demographic shifts and
environmental awareness in consumers.
Apply business goals that are unachievable if the units stay
focused on the current business environment.
Business focus can be drawn into three segments: 1) managing the core
business 2) moving into adjacent markets and 3) creating entirely new
businesses.
Lay out the challenges, the trends, the targets and have a
discussion with key team members.
The company convenes leaders from each of its units and surveys the
above information and crafts the plans it will need to meet the goals.
These innovation projects are then reviewed by the chairman once a
month, which raises the profile of these efforts throughout the
company and reinforces the importance of innovation.
Conclusion
Innovation as a Strategy
Management for continuous innovation in a rapidly changing world.
Innovation imbibed into the Culture
GE
1. Forget the rules that govern the core business.
2. Borrow the key components of the core business that will give the new business competitive
advantage.
3. Learn how the breakthrough business should run- spend a little, learn a lot through testing your
assumptions.
3M
1. organic growth and new products
2. Hire good people and let them do their job in their own ways. And tolerate mistakes
3. Be unidimensional
4. Talk, talk, talk.
5. Research must be tied to the customer
6. Quantify efforts
1. Google
1. Focus on the user
2. Open will win
3. Ideas come from everywhere
4. Think big, start small
5. Never fail to fail.
6. Launch early and iterate
7. Be a platform, float all boats
8. Make it matter
9. Be data driven
 Blue Ocean Strategy
Creating an Uncontested market space
Googles Andriod,Gmail,Google Earth,Gmail Labs
GE Global Xray Business,
3M Masking Tape and Cellophane Tape ,15% program contributed
$20billion in annual sales
Open Innovation Systems
Host ideation sessions with members of all departments
Cross Pollination of Ideas
Disrupting Innovations
Google :Chromebook, VR(Cardboard)
GE :Reverse Innovation [Mobile Ultrasound machine]
Refrences
http://www.strategos.com/google-model-managing-continuous-innovat
ion-rapidly-changing-world/
http://www.strategyand.pwc.com/media/file/Strategyand_2013-Global-
Innovation-1000-Study-Navigating-the-Digital-Future_Media-Report.p
df
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/re00222?gko=e3a0c
https://hbr.org/2007/10/general-electrics-innovation-s
https://www.ge.com/about-us/openinnovation
http://www.innovationcoach.com/2012/05/innovation-3ms-lessons-to-
be-learned/
http://www.3m.com/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2006-05-09/3ms-seven-
pillars-of-innovation
http://observer.com/2016/02/the-eight-principles-that-made-google-
the-most-innovative-company-on-earth/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-brands/innovation-3ms-
lessons-to_b_1515768.html
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00078?gko=121c3