Q1. How has 3Ms innovation process evolved since the company was founded?

Why, if at all, does 3M,

known as the hothouse of innovation, need to regain historic closeness to the customer?
Ans1.
3M Corporation has small laboratory or research and development section with some technicians and doing
experiments on sandpaper and developed some core technology at that time for 3M like masking tapes. After
such core technologies development 3M achieved global reputation and become hothouse of innovation.
However the process grows slowly and allows 3M to recognize user needs because 3M researchers contact
different employees in factories.
In 1990s 3M have 30 key technologies and get much market growth and for more development and product
3M employing more engineers and scientists. 3M corporation goes high in innovation but they are not able to
found what customer need is because of least interaction and closeness with customers and users. This is
because 3M need some marketing research and identifies customer needs rather focusing on products and
technical stuff.
Q2. How does the Lead User research process differ from and complement other traditional market research
methods?
Ans2.
Lead user research is the process in which products may be innovate and developed products on the basis of
the information and data collect by customers or user and with respect to the need of users. By the help of
lead user research organizations are able to identify the client need and move toward to create some
innovative products by getting the ideas from the users.
The lead users are the people who are able to get the solutions of the problem that organizations customers
faced. Usually the team of lead users consist creative and enthusiastic people according to individual fields
and ready to involve yourself in the process of innovation and development. Therefore lead users are the
people who identified user needs and derive the new ideas of products.
However in the traditional market research process these strategies and methods not used therefore
organizations mostly get wrong information from clients and not learned the need of the user or even the
problems that customers faced. Moreover some companies use survey process or using feedback method or
opinion poll and these processes assess by management or support team or even outsourced to third parties
due to which direct connection is not build up between the customers and the developers therefore increment
in product development is slow. For example in 3M Corporation Medical-Surgical Market Division starts the
method Lead User Research by gathering a team of talented individuals like veterinarian, makeup artists etc
and allow them to understand the requirements and needs of users and give ideas concepts to developers.
Q3. Has the Medical-Surgical team applied the Lead User research process successfully? Why or why now?
Ans3.
The Lead User Research process that applied by 3M Medical-Surgical Division cannot be evaluate on the
basis of product development. But we compute some benefits that are necessary to getting success in the lead
user process. As discuss in case study Exhibit 4: Supportive Management, Cross-disciplinary team of highly

skilled people and Clear understanding of the principles of Lead User research.
These key elements can be achieved by committing and to show enthusiasm and doing remarkable effort to
convince the company senior management by senior product specialist at 3M Rita Shor. I conclude that lead
user method is considerable as compare to traditional one but in 3M Corporation at stage III preliminary
concept generation team of lead user realize deficient in information with respect to country level and many
other nations did not care about market products. That is why stage three took longer time as compare to
stage I and stage II that is why now it becomes difficult task.
Q4. What should the Medical-Surgical Lead User team recommend to Dunlop: the three new product
concepts or a new business strategy? What are the risks to the new Lead User Process at 3M? What are the
risks to the Medical-Surgical business unit?
Ans4.
I think Medical-Surgical User team need to recommend to Dunlop the three product recommendation and in
these three recommendations the first two recommendations are simple to extend the 3M product lines. But
in the fourth recommendation as product development team stuck on upstream containment of infection and
suppose to include upstream containment in business strategy and even if 3M Medical division enter in this
infection field and applied successfully then it has become a major achievement. On the other hand if the
business strategies not succeed then it shows the process of planning is unfortunate and risky for financial
prospective and spend lot of time on research and development.