3m Business Analysis

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Global Organization Analysis 3M’s Vision, Mission, Core Values, and Culture Today, if 3M could be described in just one phrase, it would be “Perpetual-Innovation Machine.” That being said, 3M was not established with this goal in mind, but instead it was established with more humble goals. The organization’s roots lie in 1902 at Lake Superior. 3M was founded by five individuals who set out to simply create a business that provided abrasives for grinding wheels. Unfortunately, that goal was doomed from the start, as 3M’s mine for acquiring minerals used in abrasives did not have the appropriate minerals. When faced with this realization, the company sought other solutions and began importing Spanish garnet to be used as an abrasive. Again, the founders were faced with failure as the garnet would not stick to the sandpaper used in the grinding wheels. Upon researching the cause for this problem, it was discovered that the stones were stored next to Olive Oil in shipping which had seeped into the stones. In the first innovation that would eventually become a core value in 3M, the founders roasted the stones over fire to remove the Olive Oil, thus solving the adhesion issues with the stone, and igniting a fire of innovation that would burn brightly to the current day. Today 3M is a global organization with sales over thirty billion yearly, operating in seventy different countries, and employing over eighty-eight thousand people. The core values of 3M are uncompromising honesty, customer satisfaction through innovation, return for shareholders, development of employees’ talents, and respect for global social and physical environment. (citation needed) Approximately six percent of 3M’s yearly revenue (about one billion eight hundred thousand dollars) is dedicated to research and development in an effort to promote organic growth by inventing new products
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