3M – Rethinking Innovation

3M – Rethinking Innovation

Analysis of 3M’s Experience for a Process-Based Approach Toward Innovation

Managing Innovation in 3M Manage

3M manages innovation by providing conditions that can emerge from such instances as lucky accidents. The company also deliberately attempts to avoid having a fixed structure, thus enabling employees to think outside the box and be innovative.

The Innovation Strategy and Leadership Style Within 3M

The company’s innovation strategy can be defined as an active innovation strategy characterized by defending existing markets and technologies while staying ready to respond quickly once the technologies and markets are proven. The company has developed deep competence to sustain innovation and strong capabilities in product development. The company’s transformational leadership style also contributes to the innovation process by encouraging creative association and creating new and strong combinations of means and needs.

Innovation Enabling Process in 3M

3M enables the innovation process by recognizing and rewarding employees, reinforcing core values, sustaining circulation, allocating slack and permission to play, maintaining a policy of hiring innovators, accepting mistakes, and encouraging risk-taking, patience, and nurturing bootlegging. The company creates a sense of empowerment among employees and ignores creative ways invented by staff to manoeuvre the system to counter rigid bureaucratic procedures.

Significant Features or Processes That Promote Innovation.

Strategies to Recognize and Reward Employees by Management

The management team recognizes employees by rewarding them when they meet the stretch targets, which consist of clear and consistent messages and focus on the entire organization. The rewards include awards such as The Innovator’s Award, which recognizes an employee’s effort instead of achievement. Employees thus stay motivated to generate innovative ideas that can be implemented to maintain continuous innovation.

Significance of Permission to Play

3M uses permissions to play as one of the strategies to promote innovation. Permission to play is essential because it enables employees to experiment with new ideas, thus enhancing innovation. It also gives employees a sense of belonging because they can actively participate in the innovation process by using the organization’s resources to try out new innovative ideas.

Enhancing Innovative Culture Using 3M Attributes of Patience and Acceptance of Mistakes

3M attribute of patience enhances innovation by enabling the company to consider all aspects of an innovative idea, gather all the resources needed to implement it, and wait until the innovation is relevant in the market before introducing it. Acceptance of mistakes enhances innovation culture by allowing employees to take risks and try out new ideas without the fear of losing their jobs.

Comparison of the Organization from the Course Scenario with 3M.

The Differences Between the Two Organizational Structures

MBA 580 has a tall matrixed organizational culture that includes many hierarchy levels. The structure comprises creating functional silos or implementing reduced cross-functional coordination and a lack of interconnection where every function strives towards its objectives. On the other hand, 3M’s organizational structure is hierarchical, but decision making concentrated at the corporate level. 3M also has embraced the interrelation of functional areas and divisions. For instance, the corporate research lab division develops new technologies and socializes the technologies across divisions. The staff in the division also collaborates with end-users to modify existing product lines.

 The Difference Between Formal and Informal Innovation Management

Formal innovation management includes using traditional project scope, planning, and benchmarking to manage a project, while informal innovation management does not adhere to the traditional methodology or approach. Formal innovation management also includes using strict procedures and ensuring that every plan is documented, while informal innovation management does not involve strict project management rules and standards (Breuer & Lüdeke-Freund, 2016). Informal innovation management does not include extensive documentation regarding the project’s monitoring, planning, and scope. Informal innovation management also includes open communication and more flexibility and does not have a preferred scope, control roles, or responsibilities.

The Effect of Organizational Structure in Each Company on Communication and its Significance to Innovation

MBA 580’s organizational structure promotes effective communication because decisions are made at the top hierarchy and communicated to other staff in other hierarchy levels. Operating through functional groups also encourages effective communication because the information is shared based on relevance to a specific functional group. The hierarchy organizational structure used by 3M also facilitates effective communication because only relevant information is shared in every division. Communication is vital in innovation because it facilitates collaboration among innovation teams resulting in ideal performance outcomes. According to Enkel et al. (2017), communication is also crucial in innovation because it helps inform the innovation team on the idea to be implemented, guiding the innovation team to focus on desired outcomes and strategic goals, and developing and sustaining active activity participation among the innovation team.

 Identifying the Process Gaps of the Organization

Strategies Needed to Make the organizational structure support innovation

The organization needs to adopt a decentralized decision-making approach to support innovation. Currently, enterprise-wide decisions are made at the top of the hierarchy without the involvement of individuals in lower hierarchies, thus limiting the employees’ ability to implement new ideas because they need approval from top management. A decentralized approach would support innovation by enabling employees to act quickly to solve problems and make decisions (Pruschkowski, 2018). A decentralized approach would also allow employees to perform to their maximum potential and create a sense of competition, thus promoting innovation. In addition, a decentralized approach creates opportunities for employees at every level to develop their expertise and skills. Further, it enables top-level managers and executives to be aware of employees’ actual capacity and potential, thus effectively delegating duties.

Rewards My Organization Could Utilize to Motivate Innovative Behavior

One of the rewards that MBA 580 organizations should utilize to motivate innovative behaviour is monetary rewards. The organization could offer cash rewards to employees who come up with innovative ideas that can be implemented to boost organizational performance and growth. The organization could also reward innovative employees through paid vacations and promotions. For instance, innovative employees could be promoted to a higher rank in the organization and oversee the implementation of the innovative idea.

 Strategy to Examine the Timeline and Identify Ways for Longer-Term Projects to be More Successful

The organization should set milestones and targets to examine its timeline to identify ways to succeed in long-term projects. The targets and timelines need to be aligned with the availability of resources and the needs of stakeholders.

References

Breuer, H., & Lüdeke-Freund, F. (2016). Values-based innovation management: Innovating by what we care about. Macmillan International Higher Education.

Enkel, E., Dingler, A., & Mangels, C. (2017). Open Innovation: Enhancing theory and practice by integrating the role of innovation communication. Strategy and Communication for Innovation, 131-145. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49542-2_9

Pruschkowski, M. (2018). Innovation management. Structures and processes of an innovative company. GRIN Verlag.

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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.

3M – Rethinking Innovationn

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 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:

1. Analyze 3M’s experience for a process-based approach toward innovation.
   1. How does 3M manage innovation?
   2. What is the innovation strategy and leadership style within 3M?
   3. How does 3M enable the innovation process?
2. Identify significant features or processes that promote innovation.
   1. How does the management team recognize and reward employees?
   2. What is the importance of permission to play?
   3. How do the 3M attributes of patience and acceptance of mistakes enhance an innovative culture?
3. Compare the organization from the course scenario with 3M. You will need to reference the Organization Overview document when comparing the two companies.
   1. What are the differences between the two organizational structures?
   2. What is the difference between formal and informal innovation management?
   3. How does the organizational structure in each company affect communication? Why is this important to innovation?
4. Identify the process gaps of the organization. You will need to reference the Organization Overview document when identifying process gaps.
   1. What needs to be done to make the organizational structure support innovation?
   2. What rewards could your organization utilize to motivate innovative behaviour?
   3. How should your organization examine its timeline to identify ways for longer-term projects to be more successful?

Guidelines for Submission

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.