NEW YORK (Business 2.0) - 3M had a tough job replacing superstar CEO Jim McNerney, who left the industrial firm to run Boeing, as evidenced by its six-month search.

Before joining 3M, McNerney was a vice chairman at General Electric, once in the running to succeed Jack Welch. But in tapping George Buckley, chief of boats-and-bowling-balls conglomerate Brunswick, as its new CEO, 3M's board of directors picked a little-known technology visionary.

In just five years at the helm of Brunswick, a 160-year-old boating company, Buckley turned around the company's fortunes and revolutionized the recreational boating industry with a systematic formula of innovation, acquisition and execution. He'll likely apply the same formula to 3M, a diversified manufacturer four times the size of Brunswick.

"Early indications are good that Buckley can help with what 3M needs most, which is ramping up top-line growth," says analyst Michael Judd, who covers 3M for Greenwich Consultants, a stock research firm.

Buckley first joined Brunswick in 1997 as president of its Mercury Marine boat engines division. "Mercury didn't have a clear technological vision when I started," Buckley told Business 2.0 in August, "But I have always believed that no matter how stodgy or downtrodden a business is, there is always a breakout product waiting to be found." His shake-up at Mercury resulted in a breakthrough engine which delivered more horsepower with less noise and fewer emissions, and earned Buckley a promotion to CEO.

Buckley immediately shed non-core divisions such as bicycles and coolers, and began aggressively acquiring boat companies -- 13 in five years -- and centralizing them into one division. He also bet on innovations like GPS, which drove Brunswick's New Technologies division from zero to $300 million in less than three years. As a result, Brunswick's revenues jumped 27 percent in 2004 to $5.2 billion and profits doubled to $269 million, and the stock is up 150 percent since Buckley became CEO.

Can that track record translate into results in the higher-stakes reality of 3M? Buckley should be a good fit with 3M's engineering culture. He's said that, as an engineer, he is "trained to think systematically about how things work." This rigor, combined with the commitment to innovation he evidenced at Brunswick, should breathe new life into 3M, whose revenue and profit growth have slowed this year

"3M has historically been a little insular, and it's a good sign that they've brought is someone from the outside," says analyst Judd. And Buckley is used to being an outsider, a role which helps him guard against the complacency he so abhors. "The greatest danger in corporate America is the encroachment of personal pride, or even company pride, that can then transition to arrogance," he has said.

There is no question that this appointment will be a tremendous test for Buckley. Like Mark Hurd at Hewlett-Packard, who previously ran a much-smaller computer hardware firm, Buckley will have to prove that his skills scale up to the challenge. Even as Brunswick's CEO, he's made some mistakes -- an aluminum-boats line acquired last year has performed poorly -- and admitted to being in awe of his own good fortune.

"In our careers we all hope we can rise to the topmost layer, but on some level I never believed it would happen," he told Business 2.0, "I'm from a very poor family in Sheffield, and I never really imagined the fairy would visit me and grant me three wishes, but she did." 3M shareholders now have to hope that Buckley's fairy tale can last.

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For more on George Buckley's turnaround of Brunswick, see "Powerboating's New Powerhouse" from the November 2005 issue of Business 2.0.