1. What are the roots of 3M's culture of entrepreneurship and innovation? What were the key tenets of this culture as they emerged over time?
2. How has the culture of entrepreneurship and innovation nurtured at 3M from the era of McKnight through to that of DeSimone? How has entrepreneurship been institutionalized within the company?
3. What were the strengths of the organization and culture of 3M during the McKnight to DeSimone era? What were the potential weaknesses?
4. The expansion of 3M into international markets was highly successful. What explains this?
5. What was the drawback with 3M's international expansion strategy?
6. By the 1990s 3M was starting to develop some problems. What were the causes of these problems?
7. Why did 3M's board hire an outsider, McNerney, to run 3M after DeSimone. What is McNerney trying to do at 3M? What are the pros and cons of his approach?
This case traces the development of 3M's remarkable innovative culture from its early days through until 2004. The main focus of the case is on the evolution of culture at 3M, and how this culture drove the strategy of organic diversification through a continual stream of product innovations that have taken the company into a large number of different businesses. The case looks at how management deliberately institutionalized the emerging culture at 3M by creating rules and procedures that provided opportunities for, and rewarded, innovative risk taking. The classic example of this is 3M's famous 15% rule, under which research scientists are allowed to use 15% of their work time to pursue any project of their choosing. Many other examples are given in the case. The case closes with a discussion of how 3M started to stumble in the 1990s, and looks at the actions taken by Jim McNerney, who was 3M's CEO from 2000 to 2005. McNerney joined 3M from General Electric, and he introduced many GE practices at 3M.