I am excerpting on this blog roughly 10% of my next book, The New Technology Elite due out in March (and available for pre-order on Amazon – see badge on left) . Each also has a case study. Here is the excerpts from the 3M case study, for Chapter 18 which focused on how regulators have to deal with ever more technologically complex organizations they watch over. Note: the text is going through the publisher’s edits and subject to change.
3M, a company founded in 1902, is a remarkably diversified entity. David Meline, its CFO , broke out the $ 27 billion in 2010 revenues at an investor conference in June 2011. They were distributed across industry sectors: 32 percent from Industrial and Transportation sectors, 17 percent from Healthcare, 14 percent from Consumer and Office, 14 percent from Displays and Graphics, 12 percent from Safety, Security and Protection Services, and 11 percent from Electronics and Communications.
Geographically, it got 35 percent of revenues from the United States, 23 percent from Europe, 31 percent from Asia Pacific, and 11 percent from Latin America. .
As Meline got to slide 14, he presented a table similar to one we studied in Chemistry class. But instead of H for hydrogen and Au for Gold it showed 46 3M “technology platforms”—Bi for Biotechnology, Op for Optical Communications, and so on
3M innovates by finding “uncommon connections” of these platforms to create unique solutions for customers across all six of their focus industry sectors shown above.
From slide 15 on, he was back presenting financial numbers.
That one slide though, drove home 3M’s amazing technology diversity. 3M is fundamentally a science-based company. With more than 55,000 products, 3M continues to demonstrate an uncanny ability to combine highly innovative technologies in new and unexpected ways.
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How does a company so diverse communicate with its customers and market watchers? One creative way has been to present its “Periodic Table” on its website, allowing viewers to drill into each platform.
Table 18.1 extracts 10 of those platforms, and you can see the breadth of markets it supplies technology products and components. This shows less than a quarter of its platforms.
Photo Credit: 3M
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