No matter how precious the dollars, the companies that continue to look for new ways to do business are the companies that succeedIn 1982, David Drew, then International Director of IT at 3M, began to work on a project to standardise the company's IT operations around the globe. In 1988, when Drew was done, 3M had one global infrastructure instead of a separate operation in each of the 63 nations in which it maintained a presence. 3M's globalisation project was way ahead of its time. The company developed templates for global implementations that are still applicable more than a decade later. Pretty impressive. But what makes 3M's 1982 globalisation project truly extraordinary is the fact that it was launched during an economic downturn. By no stretch of the imagination was 1982 a good year. In the US, unemployment averaged 9.7 per cent, its highest level since the Great Depression. In November 1982, the unemployment rate hit a whopping 10.8 per cent. The inflation rate that year hovered just above 6 per cent. (Compare those figures with those from 2000, which saw 4 per cent average unemployment and an inflation rate of 3.4 per cent.) For most companies, 1982 was a time to pull back, hunker down and mark time while studying the Machiavellian manoeuvres of J R Ewing on Dallas. For 3M, it was a time to innovate. And 3M is still reaping the benefits. The template-based approach and centralised management it developed then has helped it keep its IT headcount low - lower, indeed, than it was in the early 80s. According to Drew, now 3M's vice president of IT, this allowed the company to breeze through the IT worker shortage that hamstrung corporations throughout much of the dotcom boom. In fact, with an IT budget that's 35 per cent larger than it was in 1982, 3M today employs 25 per cent fewer IT workers than it did then. As 3M knew, innovation is most valuable when the economy is down and out. That's when a company can separate itself from the pack. In good times everybody has lots of ideas and enough money to fund most of them. In bad times companies have to pick and choose. And that means they have to think analytically and creatively.

It's risky innovating when the dollars budgeted for projects are precious. But when the markets rebound, those who have been innovating all along will be ahead of those who haven't been.