Business Strategy in 3M
In order to motivate the employees and in order to increase the speed with which they were working, certain decisions had to be taken which were made strategic objectives and they had to be achieved by adhering to those rules. Thus business level decisions were taken. a) 15% rule – At 3M, innovation is a must. It is a compulsory strategy. There are certain scenarios where they have had to choose between innovation and profit. Profits and innovation both are important because profits are required so that the organisation can grow and sustain whereas innovation can lead to a product which can create history. So instead of devoting complete time to profit and zero innovation or instead of giving them complete freedom and sacrifice on profit, they created 15% rule wherein employees can devote 15% of their work time for a work or research of their own choice. This rule led to increase in the speed of innovation at 3M. People not only started to work on new ideas but also helped each other during that time to solve other’s problems. b) 30/4 rule – To take care of the profit part and to make sure that there are innovative products introduced at regular intervals, another rule was made namely 30/4 rule. It was a financial strategic decision which said that 30% of the profit in 3M should come from the products which weren’t present 4 years back. This rule made sure that innovation always remains in the veins of 3M. c) The 7 cent rule – another rule which