3M, a subsidiary of Imation (http://www.imation.com), has a simple goal: 30% of the sales from each of its divisions must come from new products introduced within the previous four years.

To accomplish this, 3M has a culture of innovation that permeates the company. 3M calls its development process the Triad Development Process. A cross-functional team of design engineer, manufacturer, and marketeer take charge of development for a specific product.

They are allowed exclusive time on an assembly line to develop or test their innovations. However, 3M recognizes that supervisors may sometimes reject employees' ideas. 3M doesn’t want talented yet disgruntled employees leaving the company and taking their potentially world-class products with them.

With this in mind, 3M operates a grant scheme called Genesis. This source of development funds has handed out $3.5 million since 1990 to 70 projects that could not be developed through the normal corporate channels.

3M company policy further states that 15% of employees’ time may be spent on any project they choose. One such project was the Trizact™ Abrasive sandpaper developed by 3M engineer Jon Pieper and his team.

Using the conventional 3M channels, they couldn't get funding or time budgeted to develop their theory into a prototype product. They approached Genesis, which granted them $50,000 to develop their product. 3M now anticipates selling $100 million of the revolutionary new sandpaper by 2000.

In fact, 3M's most famous product, the yellow Post-it note pad, was invented by an employee, Art Fry. He was searching for something that could mark a page in his church hymnal without damaging it.

3M produced samples for him, but distributors thought the product was pointless. Nevertheless, 3M persevered, sending out free Post-it samples to company secretaries for 12 years.