Jugaad Innovation - Jugaad King

Faced with the adversity of declining revenue and brand reputation, George Buckley, who replaced McNerney as CEO in 2005, focused on reviving 3M’s risk-tolerant Jugaad culture. Buckley began rolling back Six Sigma initiatives and reinstituted the 15% programme, giving engineers more flexibility and freedom to pursue radical ideas without fear of retribution. Buckley acknowledges, “Perhaps one of the mistakes that we made as a company – it’s one of the dangers of Six Sigma is that when you value the sameness more than you value creativity, I think you potentially undermine the heart and soul of a company like 3M.” Buckley had to move fast as several of 3M’s products were becoming outmoded or increasingly commoditized. A great reality made 3M’s leadership realize that while the company was great at engineering products, it had to get better at designing them in an appealing fashion. Sensing an opportunity in this situation of adversity, 3M decided to broaden its traditional Jugaa...