NAME: SAURABH HIREKHAN

P39049

3M INDIA: IN INDIA FOR INDIA

The case provides insights about a multinational company “3M” and the way it has been
functioning for more than hundred years. It is a research and development based technology-
driven innovation company. The case goes on from explaining how the company was founded
and how it became one of the top companies in US and a major market share holder globally.
The reason behind company’s success was the way of function and the structure of organization.
It is an organization which lets its employees have the liberty to bring innovation into the system
and apply it. For this the organization had exceptionally facilitated opportunity platforms and
even supported new innovative ideas and backed then up by funding. However, no matter how
flexible the work process was, the firm made sure that only those employees were hired , whom
they found eligible to be upright technically as well as innovative. Much more of the success of
3M was attributed to the firm’s culture, employee initiative, creativity and freedom to take risks
with experimenting new ideas.

The research and development in 3M India was less encouraged as compared to the 3M globally.
The reason sighted was India was still a growing economy as per the market of 3M in India even
after 20 years of establishment. And India is a risk averse nation. Hence the failure was also not
much encouraged and supported in India. Reasons which were sighted also signified that India
needed a more self-aligned products rather than research based products. By that it means that
India needed more diversified version of earlier products. More so the heads of the Indian 3M
believed that there was a renewed need to expand the market in India with a strategy that suited
the Indian market. But, there were some barriers to the way this was going to be achieved. One
of them being 3M’s open culture with Indian culture, sensitivity to failure and stakeholders
preferred a more authoritative management.

Some of the advantages inferred were variety in new ways which led to discover new product
utility with the same technology. This type structure not only increases revenue but in the long
run maintains more customer satisfaction as products are consumer oriented. This type of
structure gives the employees growth opportunities in personal and financial fronts, and also
maintains a consumer centric environment. However, this system also leads to lesser employee
engagement within the organization. The overall employee incentive being less makes it a lesser
motivating environment to work at. .