Creating a culture of collaborative innovation

By Andrea Stricker, 3M Customer Inspired Innovation Leader 

At the heart of 3M’s culture of collaborative innovation lies the Tech Forum, a grass roots organisation that fosters an environment of creativity and cooperation among our 11,000-strong technical community.

Our materials, process, software and electro-mechanical scientists and engineers are based in 86 Research and Development labs across the globe and the self-directed, self-organised Tech Forum inspires them to network and share ideas, leading to innovation and growth.

The first Tech Forum was formed in the US in 1951 - to discuss matters of mutual interest, disseminate information and provide education – and this holds true today, but on a much wider scale. We now have a thriving network of international Tech Forum organisations, spread across 70 countries with more than 40 specialist interest chapters, ranging from Acoustics to Vision and Perception Science.

3M legends James Hendricks and Richard Carlton were pioneers of the original Tech Forum and fostered a spirit of collaboration between the laboratory and engineering teams that still exists today. This plays a key role inspiring the cross-fertilisation of ideas spanning our 46 technology platforms.

I’m honoured to have been chair of the Tech Forum in Neuss, Germany, in 2016 and a recipient of the James Hendricks Award for my achievements during that year.

Rebellion in the ranks

Inspired by this role, I’ve explored the history of the Tech Forum and it makes fascinating reading. There was rebellion in the ranks in 1968 when representatives rejected the nominating committee chair candidate and instead nominated their own candidate from the floor.

This forced a reorganisation and three years later executive director for Corporate Technical Planning, Julianne Prager, become the first female Tech Forum chairman, using the campaign slogan ‘Impulsus a posteriori’, which translates as giving the organisation ‘an intellectual kick in the pants’.

In a spirit of open communication, the first Tech Forum flier was launched in 1971 and this has been published every month for the past 47 years. As well as a raft of other communications and face-to-face meetings and events run at a global, regional and country level, this encourages cross business and boundary collaboration.

As retired corporate scientist and inventor of the Post-it Note?, Art Fry, stated: ‘by sharing ideas at their earliest stages, before we have an idea of a product, we can talk about our problems and failures. That takes a lot of courage and trust.’

Our unique 15% culture

Our Tech Forum network inspires innovation and creative thinking and supports 3M’s unique 15% time culture.

This was introduced by William McKnight, who became chairman of the board in 1949 until he retired in 1972, and allows technical employees to spend a proportion of their time working on their own projects without management approval.

McKnight believed that it was necessary to delegate responsibility and encouraged employees to use their initiative and follow their instincts, even if that meant making mistakes. He told his managers to ‘encourage doodling’ and that ‘if you put fences around people, you get sheep’.

The 15% culture is still thriving today and has led to the invention of a number of products, including multilayer optical film, structured adhesive belts and transdermal drug delivery adhesive, as well as developing leadership skills.

Both this and our global Tech Forum network are unique attributes of 3M, pursued by many companies, yet successfully replicated by few.