In a year of stalking and writing love notes to corporate MBA recruiters, I have ended up doing quite a bit of background research on various companies. Two of my favorites are Danaher and 3M. These are multi-billion dollar industrial conglomerates that build a lot of stuff we know about (Danaher makes Craftsman tools, for example, and 3M makes Post-it Notes), along with even more stuff we’ve never heard of but can’t live without (industrial water purification and airplane wing tape, for example). The two companies are different in the way they approach product development, and comparing the two makes for an interesting discussion of “What is marketing”.
3M: Invent something cool, then find a use for it and commercialize it.
If 3M’s development model can be described in a single sentence, this is it. And 3M’s history of innovation certainly makes a strong case for it. Ask a 3M employee, for example, how their popular Command wall hangers were developed… Well I have asked, and the answer is not, “We discovered a need for convenient removable wall hangers and so we set out to create a product that would satisfy that need.” Rather, the response goes something like, “We invented this totally awesome sticky stuff that would not come off through direct pressure but came off easily when stretched laterally. Then we went out and found a use for it.” I suspect the development of products like the Post-It Note and Scotch Tape followed a similar path.
What is the development model here? It is an initial focus on scientific invention and creative development, followed by an effort to find ways to commercialize what has been developed.
Danaher: Capture the Voice of the Customer and Invent Accordingly.
Ask any Danaher marketing manager what they are passionate about as a marketer, and you won’t get past the first sentence without hearing the acronym “V.O.C.”, or Voice-of-Customer. This is the phrase they use to describe the process of figuring out what a customer needs or wants, and then inventing a product or solution to meet those needs. Take the GearWrench X-Beam for example. After exhaustive interviewing and observation of mechanics in their day-to-day activities it was discovered that it can become a significant source of hand fatigue to pull on a regular wrench day-in and day-out. Try loosening a particularly ornery bolt with a standard wrench and the problem is immediately obvious – The skinny wrench digs into your hand when you apply a lot of pressure to it.
After making this observation, Danaher set out to use creative engineering to solve the problem. The solution they can up with was a wrench that is rotated 90 degrees at the shaft, allowing pressure to be applied where the surface is broadest instead of where it is skinniest. That simple change in design was enough to increase hand contact by 500%, torque by 25%, and net the GearWrench X-Beam the first ever hand tool commendation from the Arthritis Foundation.
What is the development model here? The exact reverse of 3M’s… Instead of starting with invention and moving to customer focus, Danaher starts with a focus on the voice and needs of the customer and ends with solution-finding through a streamlined and efficient process of invention and development.
Which is right?
Well, in this case, both. 3M is a science-based company whose strategic vision is to maintain a steady portfolio of newly developed products. There is arguably no way to accomplish this strategic vision without giving scientists a certain amount of time to just “play around in the lab”, which to some degree is exactly what 3M does. Danaher, in the strict sense, is more of a conglomerate. Much of their growth is based on a strategy of acquiring other companies that fit well with their existing competencies, and in the business world Danaher has practically elevated this type of strategic acquisition to the level of art form. As a result there must be a greater inherent focus on replicable, scalable processes. And Danaher’s obsessive focus on capturing and responding to V.O.C. is just such a process.