The Wall Street Journal evaluates how leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.
3M ranks #298 overall with an Overall Score of 47.8, below the Capital Goods industry average of 49.2. The company’s best factor is AI Rank #161, followed by Innovation at #214 and Resilience at #264. None of those are leadership scores, but they are not catastrophic either.
The issue is broad mediocrity plus weak financial and agility signals. 3M ranks #394 in Financial Fitness and #359 in Agility, which pulls the company below the middle of the table. Strategically, the data reads 3M as a legacy industrial innovation franchise whose future-readiness profile has eroded. The ranking is not giving it much credit for the historical brand of R&D excellence.
Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026