3M's Battle Between Efficiency and Creativity: Inside Innovation Issue #5

[May 31, 2007- Business Week's NussbaumOnDesign - Bruce Nussbaum] You see it again and again: Six Sigma versus Innovation. The latest issue of IN tackles that issue with an indepth look by Brian Hindo at how 3M lost much of its creativity in search of process efficiency and how it got it back. Some companies--Bank of America, Starwood and others--appear to have found that balance between efficiency and creativity but it's rare and difficult to achieve. Sometimes they have to double-track the two processes and then link them up somewhere in the organization. More