William Brown

Money Moves

Leading 3M's corporate transformation

3M bought its Scott Safety breathing-apparatus business for $2 billion in 2017. Nine years later, the company is packaging it into a joint venture with Bain Capital, combining it with rescue-tool maker Madison Fire & Rescue in a $1.95 billion deal that hands 3M $700 million in cash while keeping 50.1% ownership. The new entity will sell everything a firefighter touches—breathing gear, hydraulic rescue tools, suppression nozzles, and portable wildland pumps—under brands including Holmatro, Task Force Tips, and Waterax.

Updated Mar 19

New Capabilities

Directing company's innovation strategy

For a century, developing new materials meant years of trial and error—mixing compounds, testing formulations, discarding failures, and starting over. Now PPG, 3M, and Procter & Gamble are using artificial intelligence to explore millions of chemical combinations simultaneously, cutting development timelines from years to weeks and discovering counterintuitive solutions that human chemists overlooked.

Updated Jan 30