Sustainable Marketing

3M, longtime sustainability leader plugging away, creating new products such as pipe linings, industrial paint application product, reflectivity mirror film, and Novec Fluids, that will help the world save energy, water, waste…and lots of money.

For good reason, the $30-billion company has long been held up as a role model of how to manage innovation. In the sustainability realm, 3M pioneered what now seems like an obvious idea: avoiding pollution before having to clean it up. The company’s simply named Pollution Prevention Pays program (3Ps program) has saved many billions of dollars over 36 years.

3M’s sustainability leadership has come mainly from its eco-efficiency success, but these practices are increasingly the norm in business. There was abundant evidence of the company pivoting to make sustainability a driver of business growth as well. Many companies start talking about sustainability efforts before they’ve really made significant changes to the company or its products. Although 3M may have the opposite problem — getting too little brand and marketing value out of its efforts — it is usually smarter to execute first, and then tell your story. In 3M’s case, it’s nice to see the company get out there doing it.

Several capabilities that enable 3M to innovate successfully include the culture, the intentional scenario planning or “forward mapping” within the research teams and the identification of seven core enablers or components of innovation. Through these attributes and a dedication to innovation throughout the organization, 3M has clearly established itself as an innovation leader.

However, while 3M is an excellent innovator, I believe that there are always room for growth outside of being sustainable, a couple of areas such as complacency, insular, product/technology focused, engaging organization as a whole, and/or become customer driven.

3M is clearly a leading innovator and has done a significant amount of work to innovate consistently. I believe that innovation needs to be extended beyond the product and beyond the bounds of the organization, since Business innovation and customer experience are two of the most sustainable innovations and differentiators, and there’s really very little attention paid to these concepts in any organization. With 3M’s  existing capabilities, building these qualities could help 3M achieve exceptional differentiation compare to its competitors.