What should 3M do

using Six Sigma procedures to reduce costs and increase efficiencies, or should it strive again to encourage its scientists and managers to focus on innovation?
Which will make 3M more competitive in the long run?
How much should companies like 3M rely on acquisitions for innovation? Should 3M acquire half, one-third, 10 percent, or 5 percent of its new products through acquisitions?
What makes the most sense and why?

a stream of new products and services to market, creating value for customers, sustainable advantage over competitors, and sizable returns for investors. But now it is not successful as before. Why? It continues to focus using Six Sigma procedures to reduce costs and increase efficiencies but it does not manage innovation change as well as it used to do. It is better for the company to develop its innovations rather than working with Six Sigma.
3M can create competitive advantage if it has a distinctive competence that allows it to make, do, or perform products better than its competitors. Over the long run, the best way for the company to do that is to create a stream of its own innovative ideas and products or innovation streams hat can create sustainable competitive advantage.

and begins with creativity. To improve innovation we would built creative work environment in which workers perceive that creative thoughts and ideas are welcomed and valued, providing organizational, supervisory encouragement and work group. We would encourage risk taking and new ideas, support and fairly evaluate new ideas, reward and recognize creativity, and encourage the sharing of new ideas throughout different parts of the company. Our supervisors will provide clear goals, encourage open interaction with subordinates, and actively support development teams’ work and ideas.

multifunctional teams where people from different departments are brought together and it speeds up learning and understanding by mixing and integrating technical, marketing, and manufacturing activities. Multifunctional teams accelerate innovation through early identification of new ideas or problems that would typically not have been generated or addressed until much later. They will focus on what customers want to buy from us. We would not cut costs, on the contrary we focus on new product development and quality.
We will fire powerful leaders that provide the vision, discipline, and motivation to keep the innovation process focused, on time, and on target. Powerful leaders are able to get resources when they are needed, are typically more experienced

quickly building, testing, improving, and retesting a series of different product prototypes. Our designers and engineers will build a number of prototypes improving the product or technology as much as they can by testing them. It speeds up and improves the innovation process.