Innovation at 3M

Here is some interesting information I gathered from "Innovation at 3M" a Harvard Business Review article published 23 July 2002. Intuit is working very hard to be a Premier Innovative Growth company. 3M is a great benchmark for Intuit to use because it has been a innovative leader for the past several decades.

Here are some interesting facts:

• 3M inventors motivated by individuals love for discovery and recognition (no royalty sharing)
• All staff given 15% free time to explore new ideas (often outside assigned responsibilities)
• Hosted internal showcases for products & ideas which assisted company-wide collaboration.
• Awarded innovation & provided in-house grants for innovative projects
• One of 3M’s main objectives in the 1990’s was to produce 30% of sales from products that did not exist four years earlier
• Increased emphasis on creating new to the world products instead of line extensions
• 6.5 to 7.0 cents of every sales dollar was spent on laboratory-based R&D (1997 was just over $1 billion)
• Global customer base (operating in more than 60 countries and received half of its revenue and half of its operating income)