3M's Innovative Culture
MBA 580 Module Four Benchmark Study Guidelines and Rubric
Overview
In Milestone One, you recommended an innovation option (incremental or discontinuous) to the organization from the course scenario. Now that senior management of this organization has approved your recommendation, your task is to ensure your recommended innovation option gets implemented effectively and efficiently. Remember that your perspective is still that of a middle manager for one of the top U.S. producers of luxury and mass-market automobiles and trucks.
In this assignment, you will read a case study and write a report that compares the organization’s innovation processes with 3M’s processes. This report will help your cross-functional team identify the organization's process gaps when implementing IoT in the product line and will help to eliminate potential process inefficiencies.
Prompt
Using the information in the overview above and referring to the 3M: Rethinking Innovation case study in this module’s resources, compare the organization from the course scenario with 3M and identify process gaps within the organization. Your study should include the following points:
Analyze 3M’s experience for a process-based approach toward innovation.
How does 3M manage innovation?
What is the innovation strategy and leadership style within 3M?
How does 3M enable the innovation process?
Identify significant features or processes that promote innovation from the case study.
How does the management team within 3M recognize and reward employees?
What is the importance of permission to play within 3M?
How do the 3M attributes of patience and acceptance of mistakes enhance an innovative culture?
Compare the organization from the course scenario with 3M. You will need to reference the Organization Overview document when comparing the two companies.
What are the differences between the two organizational structures?
What is the difference in formal and informal innovation management?
How does the organizational structure in each company affect communication? Why is this important to innovation?
Identify the process gaps of the organization. You will need to reference the Organization Overview document when identifying process gaps.
What needs to be done to make the organizational structure support innovation?
What rewards could your organization utilize to motivate innovative behavior?
How should your organization examine its timeline to identify ways for longer-term projects to be more successful?
What to Submit
Submit a 2- to 3-page Word document using 12-point Times New Roman font, double spacing, and one-inch margins. If references are included, they should be cited according to APA style. Consult the Shapiro Library APA Style Guide for more information on citations.
3M Case Study
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3M Case Study
By developing an innovative, entrepreneurial culture, 3M can execute long-term investing methods for new development of products. The innovative culture at 3M offers a foundation for commitment, careful consideration, and resource accessibility to realize product ideas. One of the most inventive firms today, they excel at managing, fostering, and rewarding innovation.
3M’s Experience for a Process-Based Approach Toward Innovation
Through a corporate culture characterized by an innovative environment and operations, 3M controls innovation. They invest in research and development, develop staff inventiveness, and recognize client needs as some of the actions that enable them to oversee innovation successfully. Improvements are achieved for the organization by effectively managing time allocated to staff, enabling them to spend fifteen percent of their time on innovative concepts.
Many of their ground-breaking products show these improvements, enabling them to keep innovating. They can encourage the development of a network among scientists, staff members, and clients where they can freely discuss their concepts by inviting consumers to visit their innovation centers and enabling scientists to do field research to observe consumers. Additionally, by managing such processes and comprehending client needs, businesses are better equipped to manage the utilization of resources properly. The 30% rule is another tool businesses use to control their performance. Products released within the previous four years must account for 30% of each division's income (Trott, 2021). It enables 3M to control its market share while pursuing new, inventive products in the future.
The management of 3M's development and research activities is crucial. They spend more on R&D than the average manufacturing firm, six percent on sales. Such an investment in research and development enables businesses to control product development through rigorous study of the market, consumer demand evaluation, and operational feasibility studies carried out before development. Utilizing their strong product development skills and profound technological expertise, 3M bases their innovation approach from a vantage point of strength. The organization can strategically sustain expanding innovation methods while sustaining present performance and future projects through these intangible and tangible resources.
Similarly, the leadership approach at 3M helps the innovators by putting in place a wide range of centers and platforms to generate a pool of beneficial concepts that are developed into opportunities and given the tools they need to succeed. The 3M leadership is aware that leveraging the company's core strengths improves the performance of the newly developed product and that investing in these skills is a strategic gold mine.
Through a collection of policies and procedures that direct innovative activity from signal detection through implementation, 3M facilitates the process of innovation. It is accomplished through engaging with consumers through previously mentioned consumer visits to innovation hubs and field trips by researchers. Additionally, the application of their multidisciplinary cooperation between staff members with technical understanding and those with knowledge of actual or emergent market demands enables their inventions (Trott, P2021). Projects under this dynamic produce innovative results that support and contribute to 3M's innovation process.
Significant Features or Processes that Promote Innovation
Some of the distinctive characteristics of this company include 3M's capacity to acknowledge and reward its personnel. An innovator award, which recognizes creativity applied to a project irrespective of its outcome, is given for effort rather than results. Personnel are also honored in the "Hall of Fame," where the company recognizes their unique success. Further, several levels of venture financing are accessible to help their personnel's potential for innovation.
Allowing personnel permission to participate in activities is important because it promotes a culture of curiosity and acknowledges that its worth comes from the increased likelihood of product development....