3m Case Study 
Management Case Study.
Company : 3M
Chapter :10
Question:2
How would you describe 3M’s efficiency and creative conundrum in terms of programmed and nonprogrammed decisions.? When Richard McKnight was the president of 3M in the earlier years, he recognized that inventions take time thus the implemented the 15 Percent Rule in the organization . One has to try again and again to get to their ‘Eureka!’. Art Fry, the inventor of 3M’s PostitNotes supports this notion as referenced by Michael McCuddy’s Case Study article, “ you have to go through 5,000 to 6,000 raw ideas to find one successful business”. Six Sigma , a management program that was later enacted by James McNerney who took over as CEO; counters creativity and innovation. The management program is effective in increasing efficiency and identifying problems in the workforce, subsequently it stifles creativity in the company. These two notions ; 15 Percent Rule and Six Sigma can be described in terms of programmed and nonprogrammed decisions. A programmed decision is one that is fairly structured and recurs with some type of frequency. Nonprogrammed decisions on the other hand are relatively unstructured and are usually complex, thus requiring creative solutions.
They require investing enormous blocks of time,energy, judgement and resources into exploring the situation from all perspectives.
Intuition and experience play a major role in creativity as seen in 3M’s 15 Percent
Rule. According to the article, “3M believes in the power of ideas and individual initiative ; and recognizes that entrepreneurial behavior will continue to flourish only if management is willing to accept, even accept ‘wellintentioned failure’. This nonprogrammed decision making culture makes 3M the powerful corporate beast that it is . Effective decision making is very vital to the success of a company as well, which is something James McNerney understood when he implemented Six Sigma. With this
Company : 3M
Chapter :10
Question:2
How would you describe 3M’s efficiency and creative conundrum in terms of programmed and nonprogrammed decisions.? When Richard McKnight was the president of 3M in the earlier years, he recognized that inventions take time thus the implemented the 15 Percent Rule in the organization . One has to try again and again to get to their ‘Eureka!’. Art Fry, the inventor of 3M’s PostitNotes supports this notion as referenced by Michael McCuddy’s Case Study article, “ you have to go through 5,000 to 6,000 raw ideas to find one successful business”. Six Sigma , a management program that was later enacted by James McNerney who took over as CEO; counters creativity and innovation. The management program is effective in increasing efficiency and identifying problems in the workforce, subsequently it stifles creativity in the company. These two notions ; 15 Percent Rule and Six Sigma can be described in terms of programmed and nonprogrammed decisions. A programmed decision is one that is fairly structured and recurs with some type of frequency. Nonprogrammed decisions on the other hand are relatively unstructured and are usually complex, thus requiring creative solutions.
They require investing enormous blocks of time,energy, judgement and resources into exploring the situation from all perspectives.
Intuition and experience play a major role in creativity as seen in 3M’s 15 Percent
Rule. According to the article, “3M believes in the power of ideas and individual initiative ; and recognizes that entrepreneurial behavior will continue to flourish only if management is willing to accept, even accept ‘wellintentioned failure’. This nonprogrammed decision making culture makes 3M the powerful corporate beast that it is . Effective decision making is very vital to the success of a company as well, which is something James McNerney understood when he implemented Six Sigma. With this