3M Case Study
Case Study: Three Roads to Innovation
In this new technological age, it is almost a must for all companies to be innovative. For a company such as 3M it is not just a must it is a way of life and a mean of survival. 3M has been lead by a great set of managers who have created the culture necessary to perpetuate the company and they have also empowered their employees to always create new things.
The main issue facing this company is can they keep up, this extremely driven innovation, and if so, how. The first problem they will run into is something like “the newness wearing off”. People get into their routines and forget to do things different and try new things. To heed this problem I would suggest making sure that there are highly motivated and motivating managers around to always encourage those creating and designing new products. Also create an environment that in conducive to creativity and innovation.
Another problem they could run into is employees in research and development becoming frustrated and giving up. Have you ever tried to figure out a problem and no matter what you do it just doesn’t work. I’m sure in a research and development setting they run into problems like this all the time. To hopefully prevent this problem it would have to be addressed a few different ways depending on the person. Again having a encouraging and motivating manager would help but also giving the person more space to work or allowing more open relationships as a way to hopefully stem new ideas.
A final problem to avoid would be careless mistakes. In the case it stated that by involving all functional areas from the start development time can be compressed dramatically. While this sounds productive, a highly skilled “editor” should always be involved so as to insure that they are not skipping out on key components of the development process. When trying to keep up in an ever changing, ever competitive environment a rush to the finish line may seem like...
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