Hacker Culture and the New Rules of Innovation

1 The hacker generation

James McNerney became CEO of the US manufacturing company 3M on January 1, 2001. He was hired to rejuvenate the company. 3M was (and is) famous for inventing Scotch Tape, Post-it notes and a host of other products. It held leading positions in electronics, telecommunications, health care, safety and other fields. But lately, 3M had been drifting. Profits were down and its research portfolio was in the doldrums. Investors were worried the company was losing its lustre. McNerney’s mission was to turn the company around.

McNerney’s solution was to implement Six Sigma across the entire company. Six Sigma, a process improvement methodology invented at Motorola in the 1980s, functioned brilliantly at General Electric (GE), ...