This lasted for 5 years until 1973 when a change in management allowed Silver to convince the new products laboratory manager Geoff Nicholson to give it a go. What most people don’t know about is the fact that nobody believed in this product for decades, and many people struggled to find a profitable application for the technology.Īfter the initial discovery, 3M management didn’t see value in a non-sticky adhesive, and so it did not have any internal senior support. He also sang in a church choir and had a regular problem of losing his hymn notes in his church song book.įry was then the person to suggest using the adhesive on the backs of paper so that they could be stuck and removed without leaving residue. Art Fry was working at 3M and was aware of Silver’s reusable adhesive. Legend #2: It only found its calling when used by someone else to keep track of his hymns in church However, they had the unique characteristics of the microspheres being incredibly strong and resisting breaking, and sticking at a tangent to the surface, which meant that the sticky substance could be peeled away without leaving residue and reused. Instead, a mistake led to the new adhesive called acrylate co-polymer microspheres, which were a weak, pressure-sensitive adhesive. This is apparently true, as in 1968 3M’s Spencer Silver was working on developing an ultra-strong adhesive for use in aircraft construction. Legend #1: The adhesive formula was a mistake, and was supposed to be super-strong We learn that some of the legends of how the Post-It Note was developed are indeed true. In the video above, we hear about the fascinating story of what it took for Post-It Notes to become a household name, and one of the best-selling products of all time. Yet what hardly anyone knows is that Post-It Notes were amazingly close to the same fate as 96% of other innovations: complete failure.
Some people would even hold up Post-It Notes as a symbol for innovation itself, much like the lightbulb is a symbol for an idea. Everyone knows the story of the humble Post-It Note, and how it represents an idea’s ability to evolve and flourish.
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