Page 122 - merged.pdf

•102 The 100 Greatest Business Ideas of All Time

Idea 59 – From keeping your place to keeping your
appointments (Post-It®)

Art Fry’s inspiration for Post-it® Notes dates back to when he sang in his church

choir in the early 1970s. He used scraps of paper to mark selections in his hymnal.

Unfortunately, they kept falling out and he’d often lose his place. ‘I needed a book-

mark that would stay put, yet could easily be removed without damaging my hym-

nal’, Fry says.

Around the time that Art Fry was thinking about how to make more co-opera-

tive bookmarks, his colleague, Dr Spencer Silver, was doing basic research

Art Fry realised on adhesives in 3M’s Central Research Department. Spencer had created

his invention’s a low-tack adhesive that stuck lightly to many surfaces, yet remained sticky

full potential even after you repositioned it. Fry soon realised Spencer’s adhesive was

when he wrote perfect for his needs. One morning, Fry applied some of the adhesive to

a note on one the edge of a piece of paper. ‘Now I had a bookmark that could stick to

of his new the page while exposing a part that wasn’t sticky,’ he says.

‘bookmarks’ A short time later, Art Fry realised his invention’s full potential, when

and attached it he wrote a note on one of his new ‘bookmarks’ and attached it to a report

to a report he he was forwarding to a colleague. ‘That’s when I came to the very exciting

was forwarding realisation that my sticky bookmark was actually a new way to communi-

to a colleague. cate and organise information,’ Fry says. Indeed, soon co-workers were at

Art Fry’s desk demanding more samples of his invention. The Post-it®

Note, as we know it, was born.

It is not just little, yellow and square. If you look around your work area or

home, you’ve probably got one, two (or ten!) Post-it® Notes stuck in various places

to remind you to do something. Whether it’s an ultra-coloured Post-it® Pop Up

Note, handy Post-it® Fax Notes or decorative Post-it® Memo Cubes in a tropical