Corporate entrepreneurship experience (3M company)
We talked about the strategies and lessons we should learn from the giant company 3M. Therefore, it might not be bad to give an example from the organizational entrepreneurship experiences of this company.
To ensure the flow of new and innovative ideas, Terry M instilled a unique organizational culture in the company and from the very beginning focused on 7 key principles, which later became known as the 7 Habits of Highly Creative Companies. An example of that is the invention of similar products such as sticky-backed note papers (the same famous stick notes), which brought steady success to Triam Company in the last century.
Now what was the story of these stick notes and where did it start?
– Since 1953, Art Fry has been working as a new product development researcher at TriM Company. He used to participate in the church’s weekend singing ceremony. He was always troubled because the paper of the lyrics fell on the floor. That’s why he thought if he could find a paper that sticks but doesn’t get damaged when removing, the problem will be solved (so far).
– In 1968, Dr. Silver, who was a chemist at Trimm Company, made a new adhesive with a new formula that stuck to a small amount and could be changed. Since he could not find a good use for this glue, the product started to fail.
– Frey attends one of Dr. Silver’s seminars held in the company and learns about his failed glue. The next day, he requests some of this glue from Dr. Silver and starts working on the idea he had. For this reason, he poured some of this glue on a piece of paper and stuck it on the pages of the book and saw that the papers were removed from the pages of the book without any damage.
– He is happy (read excited) and goes to show this product to the management of the company, but the management does not understand the advantage of this product (you can see that it is not only the characteristic of some Iranian managers). For this reason, in order to advance his idea and goals, Farai does an interesting job and leaves a note for the manager through these sticky papers. It also produces a large number of this product and distributes it among the employees of the central office (they call it follow-up and enthusiasm).
– After a while, people quickly get used to this product and order more of these note papers. Until, in 1977, according to the positive feedback received from the employees, the company chose the name of note papers for this product, and in 1978, it distributed them in the small urban market.
– Finally, the market test showed that this product was amazingly successful and 90% of the people who used it wanted to buy more of these notes. Therefore, in 1990, these note papers were exported to Canada and Europe, and gradually most parts of the world became familiar with this product, and the rest of the story.
The purpose of these exaggerations is that perhaps the most important aspect of this company’s innovative success is the Bootlegger principle (we will review in detail later), which was also seen in the note papers made by Art Fry. That is, based on this principle, the company allows researchers to devote up to 15% of their working time to the pursuit of ideas that they believe will benefit the company. Farai also spent the same time to find the possibilities, opportunities, development and methods of promoting this product.
Sincere
@startup_30T
This post is written by Rimaazz1