Nov
9
15 Percent Is More Than Enough
Posted by: David Tran | November 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment
If not for a certain entrepreneurial company, our daily lives would be significantly inefficient and certain beloved products would cease to exist. This company is of course, 3M, a global conglomerate consisting of scientists in its history, whom invented a series of prominent items today, most knowingly Post-It Notes. Although 3M employee Art Fry stumbled upon the adhesive paper in 1974, it was due to the fostering of 3M, which allowed his ideas to be achieved.
The company’s “15 percent program” enables employees to seek their own iconic product by allotting a percentage of their paid hours towards testing their own ideas. It is this entrepreneurial characteristic of 3M that has allowed the corporation to prosper, as many of their most successful products today were dreamt up in the program. When speaking about innovation, 3M leads by example, having spawned an employee benefit that can be seen within other companies, such as Google and their “20 percent time program.” 3M’s culture and philosophy of allowing employees to develop their own entrepreneurial drive has cultivated the notion of innovation within the company and its workers. Who knows when the next ‘Post-It Note’ will be discovered?