3M is too risk adverse to show any true growth anymore. Their litigation issues has put them into so much fear that it’s impossible to innovate. 3M is trying to approach product launches like P&G but they are clueless, slow to market, saddled with tons of red tape. Upper management is too scared to cut bad ideas because of time invested and politics. Bad all around.
Good post from @1lvu+1mEvZkf0.
If you struggle with words then just focus on the pictures.
There should be a rule that responses cant he more than three lines. It’s boring reading these long tirades.
Risk aversion didn’t ki-l 3M…it was the loss of the bootleg time to innovate, compounded by the loss of sales specialist who truly understood their customer. They weren’t able to bring insightful opportunities back to 3M labs nor sell the unique products the labs developed. 3M took its largest business sector, threw hundreds of thousands of sku’s into the trunk of a car and said the reps job was to get distributors to push high turn items. Then they invested heavily in digital marketing of “me too” products, despite distributors telling 3M its value to them was in innovative products and the 3M sales rep pull through. But the reps only had time to try to hold onto what they already had and digital marketing did not make up the slack. So the short -term profit greed won the day and heralded the end of 3M Innovation. When it was all over, 3M’s largest revenue generating business was left with a bunch of old, high priced products that were out performed by multiple competitors.
Short answer: No
Longer answer: Most truly new research work has been shuttered in the quest to 'do less with nothing' that 3M leadership has undertaken. Most really cutting edge research died under McNerney. What little survived 'underground' has been hunted down and ki-led under the current CRL SVP.
The last 20 years of research failure is based on the massively flawed assumption that leadership can correctly predict which which avenues of research will lead to the precious few big winners. The problem is that nobody, I mean nobody, has ever been able to consistently predict breakthroughs at the early 'CRL' stage so lots of avenues have to be pursued to get a good result.
Any new technologies being developed/nurtured in the Corporate lab organizations anymore? I remember when CRL was fiddling with lots of stuff. Many didn't go anywhere but those precious few that did made the company what it was in it's heyday! Oh for those days....
Agree with risk aversion, but for vastly different reasons, fear of litigation isn’t stopping new product introductions - that’s completely unrealistic. And not cutting bad ideas isn’t the issue….it’s instead the fear of introducing new, high growth potential products that are risky; better to stick with selling incremental versions of existing products to ensure hitting near term (i.e. next quarter) financial goals. That’s why the 3M growth engine has stalled….no focus or incentive for introducing bold new products (which command good margins and CAGRs)…. Too much chance of not hitting targets.