3m India Essay

1120 Words5 Pages
3M INDIA: In India for India 1. How has 3M built structural and contextual ambidexterity into the organization? How do the various elements of the system support innovation at 3M? The central idea of 3M, innovation, and it is deeply implanted into the organization, both structurally and contextually. This was possible thanks to corporate structure and culture that supports taking risks and experimenting with new ideas. The management at 3M believes that it’s critical to have many people with initiative if the company is to continue to grow and stay innovative. 3M delegates authority to the employees in order to encourage their initiatives and creativity. Accordingly, the company has high tolerance on mistakes and failures, perceiving these as learning experience. Corporate architecture of 3M was built, has evolved, in the way that it can support innovations in the company. Structure wise, the company keeps the size of each business/administrative unit in small, builds R&D laboratories in each business division and sets organizational roles to properly support innovation. Divisions were kept small to prevent the company to become centralized and bureaucratic, which might diminish the level of innovation. Since almost every business/administrative unit had R&D facilities, innovation is possible from various product level regarding time frame and target market. The existence of an executive (an organizational role) ensures that the new ideas are protected from the operating organization. Organizational processes are design to facilitate innovation as well. First, there is a 15% rule. All the employees have to spend 15% of their work time on developing products that are not related to their routine work. The initial proposal was expected to be simple to make sure more employees to pursue their ideas. Company encourages cross-division funding so that as

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