REVENUE STRATEGY - 3M

3M, once a leading innovator was stifling under the discipline of Six Sigma processes. While Six Sigma was invented as a way to improve quality, its main value to corporations now clearly is its ability to save time and money. Wharton School professor Mary Benner and Harvard Business School professor Michael L. Tushman, suggest that Six Sigma will lead to more predictable, incremental innovation at the expense of more blue-sky work. While process excellence demands precision, consistency, and repetition, innovation calls for variation, failure, and serendipity. 3M’s reputation as an innovator has been sliding.

So Now:
1. 3M has loosened the reins a bit by removing 3M research scientists' obligation to hew to Six Sigma objectives. These financially definitive outcomes were much more elusive in the context of a research lab.
2. It is opening the money spigot to help get the creative juices flowing - hiking spending on R&D, acquisitions, and capital expenditures. The overall R&D budget will grow 20% this year, to $1.5 billion.
3. Even more significant it is funneling cash into “core” areas of 3M technology, 45 in all, from abrasives to nanotechnology to flexible electronics.
4. In January, it sold its pharma business for $2 billion.
5. Its emphasis has shifted from profitability and process discipline to growth and innovation.

Premise 1: Invention is a disorderly process.
Premise 2: Disorder is the cradle of inefficiency and loss.
Inference: So invention begets loss.
WRONG!

[Click here for full story at: BUSINESSWEEK.COM]