My Day at 3M’s Innovation Center – Initial Observations

3M’s innovation center, built about 3 years ago, sits across a pond from a “square mile of research labs” focused on dozens of different industry groups.  The center’s focus is on exposing customers to the broad array of 3M technologies, in order to help create innovative solutions. I was part of a group of seven innovation researchers, consultants and thought leaders (see list below) invited to the Innovation Center for a show-and-tell of 3Ms capabilities and some of its innovation management thinking. 

We use 3M as an example in Grow From Within, mostly as a cautionary example, because innovation management practices that work at this remarkable company generally don’t transplant well to other corporate contexts.  For instance, commenting on 3M’s well-known practice of allowing people to self-direct up to 15% of their time, Dr. Nelson Levy (a former vice president of R&D and president of various global pharmaceutical companies) quipped at a Kellogg Innovation Network meeting in 2004, “I might as well give my people 15 percent paid leave!”

My visit did not dislodge the view that 3M is not an easy company to emulate, and most companies should not try.  They are one of the few companies in the US that has maintained robust central R&D, and in that respect they are something of a national treasure.  They have maintained an open, flexible culture in which talented people happily choose to spend their whole career.  We met accomplished scientists such as Sumitra Mitra, Olester Benson, Jr. and Ken Smith who have been with 3M for decades and are still productive technical and business development leaders. Vice Presidents Robert MacDonald and Larry Wendling have been with 3M since the 1970s.  This gives 3M a rich trove of world class scientific and technical expertise, which they exploit through extensive internal networking and flexible assignments. 

From the point of view of corporate entrepreneurship, such flexibly in assignments is key. Several of the 3M people in the meeting had started in a lab, moved over to a business, and then back into a lab. People with new business ideas are free to seek support anywhere in the company if their direct management does not see the value of what they are doing or if the better opportunity appears to be in a different market space.  I met one young corporate entrepreneur, Mike Strommen,  who is leading an effort in renewable energy.  Mike sits comfortably at the interface of technology and future markets.  He is able to muster support for investigating this broad and potentially lucrative market of the future, calling on technical, business and administrative expertise to help coordinate various pieces of the business development puzzle as the company searches for the most compelling value propositions in this emerging market.

Interestingly, the company seems to under-appreciate its business building expertise.  Much of our day centered on science and technology.  They’ve created an almost Disney-esque showroom that could rival any science museum, complete with a planetarium-style movie space.  It’s chock full of hands-on stations where one can play with any number or remarkable inventions, such as floating concrete and micro-pellet “sand” that move in a glass like a liquid.  But talking with Mike Strommen over lunch, it’s clear that the web of culture and practices that keep the organization humming is almost taken for granted.  The systems, symbols and behaviors, that permit 3M to build new businesses on an ongoing basis—not just new products—are largely in the background of people’s minds.  A company coming to 3M’s to learn how to do it might be hard pressed to find someone who could articulate this “secret sauce.”

That being said, we were treated to a fascinating presentation by Andrew Ouderkirk that included an examination of the characteristics of 3M inventors and innovators.  He and his colleagues were able to discern 4 types:  Specialists, Architects, Scouts and Adapters.  Specialists tend to be a font of breakthrough inventions, while Architects have the experience and vision to build them into sustaining platforms, with the assistance of Scouts who lack technical depth but are quick to make market need connections.  (Adapters contribute by creating trade secrets and important but usually incremental innovations.)  It turns out that 3M’s historical hiring and promotion practices have conformed to this pattern, with the most productive people, in terms of both technology and business development, coming in and rising to the top of the organization. 

Can this happy situation continue?  Questions raised at the end of the day explored whether the communal spirit of 3M R&D system could be sustained as the company globalizes, tapping talent worldwide. Will young engineers and scientists coming into the organization take to the kind of networking that has made 3M so successful?  In particular, young people today network extensively outside their organizations.  3M has succeeded in the past relying primarily on its own diverse and active internal networks, and perhaps this is the most sensible strategy for them.  But would it do even better if it engaged in greater “open innovation” with external entities?  Would 3M discover even more profitable business models by expanding its vision beyond its world class technology base?

Three of my colleagues have also shared their thoughts on the event:

Jeffrey Phillips, OVO
Nick Schulz, American Enterprise Institute
Paul Williams, Think for a Change

The other participants were:

Lisa Bodell, FutureThink
Joe Sinfield, Innosight
Mary Tripsas, Harvard Business School

Tagged as: business building, case study, innovation culture, Networking, R&D