Topic: 3M Company

Rebranding the License Plate: 4 Designers Clean Up Graphic Road Kill

Why are so many license plates so bad? Ken Carbone sets out to revisit his state's much-reviled design and invites Craig Minor, Bart Crosby, and Stefan Bucher along for the ride.READ»

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Strategic Planning is Dead - Setting a Sound Strategic Direction is Not

If you don't know where you are going, any direction will get you there. By now you know that I am not a big proponent of the traditional annual strategic planning process.  Yet I do feel very strongly that one of the key ...READ»

Playing Tens: The CLO, CRO and CSO

In the sixth post of their 7-part series, John Elkington and Charmian Love look at how CLOs, CROs and CSOs are coping with the new wild cards dealt by environmental, social and governance challenges.READ»

Today's Most Innovative Companies by Popular Demand

Harris Interactive polled close to 30,000 folks to find out what companies have the best reputations in corporate America. A yet-to-be-released part of that study tested the public on which companies had the most innovative products ...READ»

Health-Care Bill Will Cost AT&T $1 Billion, May Lead to Cut in Retiree Drug Coverage: Who's to Blame?

This story may well get a lot of press from both sides of the health-care debate this week. It's a little complex, but it's worth understanding fully; retirees may lose benefits over this, and we need to know why.READ»

HP Invents a "Central Nervous System for Earth" and Joins the Smarter Planet Sweepstakes

Hewlett Packard announces the first commercial application of its holistic blueprint for smarter cities: "CeNSE" (Central Nervous System for the Earth). But what sets HP apart from its rivals is its determination to create a smarter planet almost entirely within house, from sensors of its own design and manufacture to servers and software to the consultants who will tie it all together.READ»

Out of the Box Solutions for Sustainable Shipping

Even in the Great Recession, businesses in every industry are pushing forward with sustainability because boosting profitability and going green go hand in hand.  Still, it can be surprising how much of their eco-benefit often ...READ»

Cisco's Big Bet on New Songdo: Creating Cities From Scratch

The world is bracing for an influx of billions of new urbanites in the coming decades, and tech companies are rushing to build new green cities to house them. Are these companies creating a smarter metropolis -- or just making money?READ»

The U.S. and Canada Fight Over Who's the Biggest Joke of the 2010 Expo

With pavilions mired in budget controversies, laughable design, and, yes, circus clowns, the US and Canada are set to be the embarrassments of Shanghai 2010.READ»

Nike Air Max Sneak Preview

We’ve seen plenty of Nike hybrids this year and though this is one of the last ones most purists would have asked for, we get a new perspective on how similar the original designs actually were. Through the lens of the new Nike Air ...READ»

Cut Yourself Some Slack, Willya?

If this year has taught many in business anything, it is how failure can reach out and grab even the most successful enterprise. Yes we all have been reminded that failure is a fact of life but we may have forgotten that failure is ...READ»

Kimberly-Clark Broadens Sustainability Efforts, Partners With Terracycle

I have to hand it to Kimberly-Clark. The bathroom tissue giant, which was attacked last winter by Greenpeace for its destructive tissue-sourcing habits, has made some serious strides in sustainability over the past year. First the ...READ»

Will 3-D Displays Spiff Up Cell Phones?

Three-dimensional display tech is coming to all sorts of gear, from TVs to strange desktop prototypes from Sony. And now, thanks to 3M and thin-film tech, it could be making it onto the tiny LCD of your favorite cell phone. The ...READ»

Is Management Efficiency A Myth?

The current recession has produced a flood of management "experts" and many leaders of organizations whose only strategy for dealing with the downturn in the economy is cutting costs, layoffs and more efficiency based strategies. The mantra for business for much of the last century has been operational efficiency. So leaders look for ways to cut costs and make the operations lean and mean. Yet much of the rationale for and evidence supporting efficiency as a key management strategy is questionable.READ»

Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Innovation* But Were Afraid To Ask

This is way too long for a blog, but what the heck... “There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system”- Machiavelli (1469-1527) One of the ...READ»

Amazon Basics: Branding Advice for Jeff Bezos from 11 Marketing Experts

Memo To: Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.comMemo From: Fast Company Marketing Roundtable AdvisorsRE: Amazon Basics brandingThis past weekend, Fast Company convened a virtual roundtable of marketing strategists and brand ...READ»

Market Research 3.0 Is Here: Attitudes Meet Algorithms in Sentiment Analysis

This is the marketer's and researcher's dream. Reconciling the natural tensions that challenge and befuddle brand planning:Feelings & FactsSentiments & Statistics Qualitative & QuantitativeFocus Groups & ...READ»

Does Branding Pay Off for Colleges? Harvard Thinks So.

It has taken a while for branding to seep into the world of higher education. Traditionally universities and colleges have not been staffed by professional marketers. There has been a revulsion toward the concept of Customers, in ...READ»

This Five-Letter Word Is Key to Marketing Success: B-R-A-N-D

While the concept of personal branding has taken off, corporate branding seems to go in and out of favor. Economic cycles may have a lot to do with that. With the growth of the Internet and social technology tools, personal branding ...READ»

Neuromarketing Hope and Hype: 5 Brands Conducting Brain Research

Even before the age of Mad Men marketers were trying to tap into the human subconscious to influence consumers to buy their products. But over the last decade or so, as the fields of neuroscience and marketing science (as some like ...READ»

The New Rules of Brand Competition

The old branding model is past its "sell by" date. It is a product-centered model that comes from packaged goods in the '70s and '80s; offer differentiated benefits that a particular consumer segment is thought to care about. "My ...READ»

Innovating Innovation: The Best Ideas Can Come From Anywhere

Traditionally, new product development has been a linear process. The "new product" team creates many alternative versions of the core idea, winnows them down in various stages of testing and re-development until a winner ...READ»

Design on a Dime: 3M to Produce Student Concepts

3M Canada recently sponsored a class at Ontario College of Art & Design to revamp its office products, and the company now plans to produce the two best designs. One is a tape dispenser by Matthew Pacione; another is a ...READ»

Some of the Greatest Inventors Are Women

digg_url = 'http://www.fastcompany.com/article/some-greatest-inventors-were-women'; digg_skin = 'compact'; Do you know who invented liquid paper or the first solar home heating system? Well, those inventors were women. And with ...READ»

Don't Confuse Creativity with Innovation

The British Government says that we are all creative -- and that education and workplace environments are at fault for not providing enough recognition or encouragement. This is an increasingly fashionable argument, But is it true? I ...READ»