Transforming B2B Customer Engagement at 3M

Aruna Naik

Case Overview• 3M’s Electronics and Energy business: serves electrical,

electronics and communications industries

• The business problem: Challenge in Material science business is, how to help customers appreciate the new end used products

• Lee Fain, a design strategist and Bert Haldin, a business development manager at 3M constantly struggling – To make their products cost effective– To mange their supply chain more efficiently, and– To make meaningful technical developments

• Solution: Design thinking and tools

Design for growth (D4G) process and tools

Myth about design thinking

Design Thinking Consumer ProductsCompanies (only)

B2B Space (Customer co-creation)

B2B Space (Customer co-creation)

B2B Space (Customer co-creation)

B2B Space (Customer co-creation)

B2B Space (Customer co-creation)

Design tools for customers engagement process• Reimagining the sales process

• Selling design in the B2B space

• Design provocation

• The really big show

• Finding the right partners and opportunities

• Demonstrating design’s value

Reimagining the sales process• Salesperson is a primary

stakeholder who needed help creating a different kind of sales process

• Using mobile handled devices would seem less forced, more natural

• Customized approach to interact with customers

• Portable device helps activating vision

Selling design in B2B space• What role design could play in a material science company and how

it could improve customer relationships is the major challenge

• Framework: DOES – Desires: Do what you want to do– Obstacles: What is preventing you from achieving your desires– Effects: what are the side effects of those obstacles– Solution: What could the answers look like from your

perspective

• Storytelling– Gaylon White (Director of Eastern Chemical Company’s design

industry program) coached Lee on using storytelling to communicate message

Contd…• Ethonography

– Research methodology brought from the field of anthropology

– Focuses on studying people in their natural environment

– Uses both observation and in depth interviewing

• Assumption testing: An effective engagement strategy required creating deliverables appealed to all profiles– Business professionals: technology– Sales professionals: numbers and

timings– Technical experts: capabilities of

innovation– Designers: enabling aspect of

technology

• Five appealing deliverables to all profiles

Inspirational video

Educational material sample

Educational video

Technical demonstrator

Appearancemodel

Marketing

Sales lab folks

Designers

Technical experts and sales

Design Provocation• If customers wanted to do X

with their product and we had Y we our technology, what might our customers do ???

• Ability to cerate something visual to react to such as stories, videos or physical mock upsMake the future feel realMuch more engaging

conversation with customers and

wider audience

Finding the right partners and opportunities• Forward thinking: futuristic yet

grounded in today’s technology

• Science fiction: Projecting something which is not been tested in lab

• Investment should be proportional and weighted based on the opportunity

• Choosing the right partners is equally important– Propose new ideas and new

solutions

Demonstrating design’s value• The design approach doesn’t compete with data – It complements it

• Design’s value started with uncovering gaps, identifying what was missing, and then finding opportunities to fill those gaps

• If you can see an opportunity and take it!– Creating a new future requires us first to envision in mind’s eye

• Quantitative approach by scientists + qualitative approach by designers = technology more humanistic

What Lee didn’t do…• He didn’t preach the gospel of design thinking instead, he helps

people solve problems

• He avoided getting cut in wars between functions, which is especially important in a diversified organization

• He refused to waste his time in the wrong culture. Instead, he finds a home in an organization open to experimentation

Great advice from great design thinker!

Observer Protagonist vs. antagonist Context

complexity/noise Frameworks