3M Product Strategy

50,000 Products but 3M Still Searching for Growth According to Mr. Thulin, 3M’s CEO, “., is trying to maintain 3M’s reliable profitablitly while giving sales growth a bit more zip.” 3M has a vast product line already so in order for Thulin to increase profit even more he is going to have to be innovative and come up with several strategic plans. On the business side, he is going to have to see what products are not reaching the target sales growth and maybe sell them off to another company and focus on the future of 3M. Most MNE’s focus on maximizing shareholders wealth but in this case the goal target of raising earnings per share is just not working out. Shannon O’Callaghan, an analyst at Nomura Securities International, said, “3M clearly has more of a long-term focus [than many publicly trades companies] and less desire to please investors every quarter. With that being said Thulin wants to focus his attention to putting more money in Research and Development instead of worrying about making the investors pocket fatter every quarter. As a business strategy I think it is smart for him to focus on R&D. I believe it will lead to a competitive advantage in innovation. It will enable them to succeed with their products that have the biggest potential for growth that consumers need and will want. Also, with him working closely with all of the managers, he is looking for the source of why a product does not have high profits. So it can create synergies across the company and cohesiveness that will be hard to imitiate. As a resource based view it is also a competitive advantage on their end. In conclusion, 3M’s CEO is has the right strategies in mind to create a business with high growth potential.