Analysis of 3M's Innovation Process and Lead User Research Strategies

This report examines the evolution of 3M's innovation processes, from its early reliance on employee-driven discovery to its later adoption of lead user research. It explores the shift from traditional marketing research, which often failed to identify breakthrough product opportunities, to a method that prioritizes direct engagement with expert users to uncover unmet needs. The report details how 3M's medical-surgical team successfully applied the lead user research process, identifying crucial needs related to surgical infections and developing innovative product concepts such as improved surgical drapes, antibacterial skin treatments, and infection-resistant medical devices. The report also analyzes the team's recommendations to management, discussing the risks and benefits of pursuing either new products or a broader business strategy, and ultimately emphasizes the importance of customer-centric innovation in driving future growth and success. The report highlights 3M's historical innovation, its current challenges, and offers insights into the strategic choices the company must make to maintain its competitive edge.

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INNOVATION AT 3M CORPORATION
By (Name)
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Innovation at 3M Corporation
1. How has 3M innovation process evolved since the foundation of the company? Why
does 3M need to regain its historic closeness to the customer?
Initially, the 3M investors did not directly share in product royalties and an innate
love for discovery was expected to spur on innovation. In the 1920s, for example, a
technician named Richard Drew came up with the idea that later led to the development
of masking tape in response to paint peeling away when removing glued newspaper strips
used in masking material (Thompke & Nimgade, 2002). He also went on to invent Scotch
brand cellophane that helped the company stay afloat during the depression. This he did
when he was expected to be making improvements on an existing product, and his
success with this helped birth the 3M aphorism ‘it is better to seek forgiveness than to ask
for permission. Innovation was encouraged in ways like awards for innovation and grants
to technicians to fund innovative projects. The staff was allowed to use 15% of their time
in exploration of new ideas and responsibilities, an idea, which birthed things like post-it
notes, by inventor Art Fry. Heavy emphasis was placed on research and development,
and senior technically inclined employees were allowed to move on from the company
without having to go through management. Internal showcases were held to exchange
ideas and discoveries across departments, a factor that helped the company retain most of
its employees. William Coyne, head of research and development, felt that traditional
strategic planning had little room for innovation (Thompke & Nimgade, 2002).
A member of the medical-surgical marketing research admitted that even though
they led in their niche with the surgical drapes, which had consistent sales, the numbers
were stagnating and if a new product were not created then the division would have to

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close down. Initially, part of innovation was dependent on marketing research, which did
not seem effective considering the disadvantages that normal customers had no
innovative ideas. Product developers and marketers were responsible for any innovative
ideas or products when customer visits which used to be done by the company were
stopped. Marketers thought of a new product and commercialized it without any input
from consumers, leading to many 3M inventions laying in laboratories and awaiting
markets.
Closeness to the market was at the core of 3M before the shortcomings of market
research were found out, and it did lead to some innovations and inventions when
technicians went to see consumers, such as physicians, make use of the product. Lead
user research was adopted, as a means to make a breakthrough product by finding new
needs not thought of before. This would involve users, but specific ones who had
expertise in an area related to the product, who would have used the product and noticed
shortcomings. Rebuilding a relationship with the customers would help technicians to
have an idea on what to make improvements on, instead of just making new products
with no utility and which the market will not be willing to buy.
2. How does the lead user research process differ from and compliment other
traditional research methods?
Market research reports provided abundant data but limited information to form
the concept for a breakthrough project. Lead user research was proposed when it was
apparent that traditional marketing research was not effective and would not help the
division to create a new successful product. While the initial approach took data from

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sales representatives with contact to physicians and nurses, focus groups with nurses
from scattered locations, customer evaluations of current products, site visits by scientists
and technologists to observe physicians at work and note foreseeable needs and data on
risk factors (Thompke & Nimgade, 2002). This was disadvantageous as market
researchers created too many interfaces with the customer and risk factors could be
gotten from any medical textbook. Focus groups gave no clue on market needs years
down the line. The premise of lead user research shows that some customers experience
the need earlier before considering themselves as an asset to innovation. This premise
drew from the example of whiteout being invented by a secretary and Gatorade being
created with input from athletes. It created a need for personnel to have a great deal of
knowledge about infections, the possibility of the patient’s own body being a source of
infection, creating a need for good surgical drapes.
Extensive research was done by the team members for them to have initial
information before they identified the problems their target market faced. In the
traditional marketing method, the researchers did not set out while already armed with
information, and they therefore did not know what questions to ask and what to watch
for. Experts were contacted to give an opinion on improvements to be made to
breakthrough products such as how it would adhere to the human body. The team-
generated features that would best meet customer needs.
The developing world in Asia and South America was identified as a major
potential market since infectious diseases were still threats and it was seen that a study of
these areas could provide new growth ideas (Thompke & Nimgade, 2002). The Medical
surgical Markets division sent product developers rather than marketers to visit potential

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customers in these developing countries to see how surgeons dealt with infections under
the extreme conditions that some of them were forced to work under.
This new approach emphasized collecting qualitative data, which would bring up
new concepts and questions to be answered in contrast with the previous approach with
collected quantitative data, which could be analyzed in a more organized manner. The
right questions were probed. This process was meant to come up with opportunities for
product development, which could not be possibly done by traditional means. Ideally,
this is meant to stem from knowledge of emerging consumer needs and better concepts
on existing products and services due to reliable data and faster innovation. Major trends
related to consumer needs are studied and matched with possible corresponding products,
with an emphasis on ideal attributes and features that best meet these needs. Experts
among the lead users are interviewed for technical knowledge about concept generation.
The managers were involved in implementation of concepts and confirmed the
correspondence of the concepts with business interests.
3. Has the medical surgical team applied the led user research process successfully?
The medical surgical team has managed to successfully apply the Lead User
Research process. This is because this approach lays more emphasis on the consumers
who are the lead users of the company’s products. In the team selected to help in
discussions were a surgeon, a veterinary surgeon, a makeup artist who though he seemed
unorthodox had a wealth of knowledge on the application of substances to skin,
researchers, and marketers. Surgeons both in developed countries and in the developing

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world were observed at work and the challenges they face observed. It was noted that
developing countries, even though they had some few well-equipped world class
hospitals, has a lot of below par medical facilities in which the surgeons worked under
very hard conditions and which could not possibly afford the surgical drapes at the price
being offered by the company. Therefore, for this reason it was set out to develop cheaper
products for this market as a way of also expanding the company’s reach.
All the steps followed by the team were geared towards not only finding the
user’s needs but also coming up with concepts that would help in the satisfaction of these
needs. Information about the division’s major focus in term of products, which was
infections which were related to the process of and conditions surrounding the surgery
rather than the illness itself, was collected in an intense period of research through
medical journals and other sources. After a period of intense research, the team was able
to find out that at least 30% of the infections were from the skin of the patient, and this is
the information that was most focused on during seminars and meetings. The team had
meetings to make sense of the information they had gathered and made calls to users who
might have experienced these infections, including the MASH unit whose operations
needed portable, flexible, and affordable products but were more focused on issues like
transportation and therefore did not form the desired lead users. The fact that the team
communicated with such a wide variety of possible lead users can suggest that the ones
they managed to keep were going to air genuine concerns, which would be important in
concept generation.
It is my opinion that the team was successful in applying the lead user research
process because when they contacted the lead users they ascertained their interest in

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accessing products, which would solve the problems that the division aimed to solve too.
They had meetings to think through needs and how to not only make them quality but
convenient, as was proposed by the veterinary surgeon who proposed the surgical drape
which only allowed access to areas of the patients being operated on, and the input of the
makeup artist on different materials to help the drapes adhere to skin. They came up with
concepts and sufficient explanations for them and as a bonus even had a concept for a
product out of the normal range that the division usually delved in and more than they set
out to do. They also intended to do research on detection of infections before they
happened, and even though this would require a new business strategy, it can also show
their own confidence in the success of their research process and their concepts.
The team managed to come up with ideas for new products to solve this problem,
complete with surgical drapes made of more affordable materials to reduce the cost and
enable affordability by most consumers in developing countries. The surgical drapes also
had fastening devices and adhesive to stick it to the body, were made in a size to fit all
patients, and allowed focus on the specific body part being operated on. They also had
the concept for a skin doctor, a device that would apply layers of an antibacterial fluid to
the skin surrounding the operating point, with a suggestion for an accompanying vacuum
device to remove any pre-existing moisture on the skin before the layers are applied. The
third product they came up with was outside the scope of what the company had
attempted before, and was an antibacterial armor line, which was meant to protect tubes
and catheters leading inside the body from microbial infection

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4. What should the medical surgical lead user team recommend to Dunlop; the three
new products or a new business strategy? What are the risks?
Dunlop as an executive believed in the traditional marketing research method that
was used to obtain data with numbers that were much easier to analyze. Nevertheless,
considering the fact that the Medical-surgical department had lasted decades with only
one successful product showed that customers could not be trusted to recognize their own
needs and had no ideas on improvements that needed to be made. Even though they were
the leaders in the particular niche of surgical drapes, the sales were stagnating which
meant that there was a market that had yet to be tapped or that the product did not cater to
specific needs that the consumers had. The Lead User Research team even in initial
stages had a hard time convincing him of the feasibility of the project for which he
showed open disapproval and termed a ‘tax to the current operating income’ (Thompke &
Nimgade, 2002). For this reason, it would be better to sell the idea of a new business
strategy to him.
The business strategy of 3M is more oriented towards making new products,
which will generate about 30% of the revenue. An executive also once said that they
would produce anything that makes money. Increasing profits is a major goal of the
company, and there is a possibility that while the new products are being introduced into
the market, they will not perform as well as expected in their novelty and before
consumers are convinced of their usefulness. The team can recommend a new business
strategy based on competitiveness, this meaning that there should be an emphasis on
differentiating products with any other that a competitor may produce, creating products
which are affordable by different classes of customers, and always seeking to diversify on

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products and services. This business strategy encompasses all the new products
developed in that they are all either improvements on current products of the division and
include a new product catered toward a different direction. The new products were an
economy line whose greatest emphasis was on cost, a skin doctor line, and an
antimicrobial armor line. The first two were seen as introduction to already existing
product lines, while the last was a foray into new activities, which was expected to open
doors to new activities (Thompke & Nimgade, 2002). By describing a business strategy,
that allows more freedom for continuous research and continuous contact with
consumers, the new products could be seen as a pilot proof of the strategy.
The whole research process should be defined by its goals to boost global
presence of the division and 3M at large with the resultant creation of new double-digit
growth for the division.
The lead user research process had when it started a goal to create new concepts
and ideas but as was admitted by members of the team, it was not enough to have new
products with an old business strategy. It would defeat the final purpose of the team for
the strategy to be rejected.
The risk is that the whole Medical-Surgical division could be shut down if it seems that
they cannot come up with any innovative ideas to keep it afloat. The research to detect
microbes before they cause infection, which could be a billion dollar industry in its own
right, had a possibility of not being approved.

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Reference
Thompke, S. & Nimgade, A., 2002. Innovation at 3M Corporation (A). Havard Business School
Publishing, 9-699-012 Rev, July 23, pp.1-23.