3M has long been known as an innovator.
But as this Business 2.0 article mentions "A little over five years ago, several top executives at 3M called together their senior managers in R&D to show them the not-so-rosy writing on the wall. The company’s annual revenues were stalled, and the new-product pipeline was inefficient and unpredictable. Groups of researchers had become too fragmented to develop ideas that led to breakthroughs or blockbusters. In short, innovation at the century-old American icon needed a reorg. Soon thereafter, newly hired CEO James McNerney -- a Jack Welch protégé who had been a finalist for the top job at GE -- tapped Larry Wendling, the vice president in charge of 3M’s central R&D lab, to rev up the company’s invention machine."
Reorg as the solution? Too many corporations reorg every few months. What is interesting about this story is how the re-org re-energized innovation - the relevant kind that yields new revenues and profits. Read on...
