Muddling Through - and Post-its

Harrison Owen hhowen at comcast.net
Wed Nov 10 13:50:09 PST 2004


That is the "official story" -- and as you can see Post-its is described as
a product of the innovative environment at 3M. The way I heard the tale from
those who were there ran like this.

It is true that Fry was developing adhesives -- what else do you do at 3M?
But he made one that seemed like a ridiculous mistake. It would not stick
permanently. So he put it to one side and went on to better things until one
day either he or a colleague discovered a unique need. He sang in a choir
and they did lots of different hymns from the hymnbook. The practice was to
put page markers in the book so they could find the right hymn at the right
time. Only problem was the page markers kept falling out, so they were
always losing their place. And -- if they glued the page marks in it would
ruin the book. What to do? Seemed to him that glue that would not stick
permanently might just do the trick.

He made up a batch, tried it and it worked. Pretty soon, all the other choir
members wanted their own set -- and Fry thought he might just have a
business. In a short while he had more business than he could handle, and
turned to some of his colleagues for some ideas as to how they might mass
produce the "little stickies." Somebody suggested that they could get some
development money from the research people -- they tried, but the answer
came back -- What? A Glue that won't stick???? No dough ($$$$s). But Fry was
not to be put off, nor were his colleagues and they created what in those
day was called a Skunkworks. For those of you who don't know, a Skunk is a
smelly, small animal who likes to stay out of sight, typically in basements
and under porches. So a Skunkworks is a place where people do things that
others might find odd, weird, offensive, or all three. This small band of
folks used whatever might come to hand -- which meant that they begged,
borrowed and stole resources as needed. They even used their own money.

After a bit they had things pretty well together -- a product that worked.
All they needed was a little packaging to make it pretty and some
advertising. They took their marvelous invention to the appropriate
corporate types -- who did little more than snicker -- and once again, No
Money.

The Skunkworks continued to skunk it out and after a while they not only had
a product, a package -- but also a growing market. And most embarrassing,
they were making money and it looked like they could make a lot of money.
This was a problem, if only because they were all loyal 3Mers. Once more
they went to the powers that be and FINALY the lofty 3M deigned to accept
the lowly Post-it.

All the rest is history, but it a history that seems to get re-written a
bit. It now seems that the Skunkworks, once well beneath the dignity of 3M
has now become a shining example of Corporate Vision. Oh Well.

Harrison

Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland   20845
Phone 301-365-2093

Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm
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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Chris
Corrigan
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 1:48 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: Muddling Through - and Post-its

Here is a link Marei:

http://www.3m.com/about3M/pioneers/fry.html

Chris


On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 22:37:00 GMT, Marei Kiele <mareikiele at web.de> wrote:
> "Harrison Owen" <hhowen at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > I am not sure that the strategy would actually work, but there are
multiple
> > examples of what you are talking about. The most famous one (at least in
the
> > US) is the story of Post-its at 3M. The innovation occurred in a totally
> > messy way (didn't follow any known procedure) and the Management of 3M
did
> > their very best to ignore, starve, and squelch the new thing. Despite
all of
> > that, the little Post-it triumphed (made money) -- and at that point
company
> > policy changed. Suddenly the new innovation was trumpeted as the result
of
> > the vibrant, forward looking, boundary breaking environment of 3M. Ha
:-)
>
> That the Post-Its story is a great one, I now hear for the the third time
at least (on this list before and on the Understanding Open Space-CDs), but
I never got to learn the story itself! Dear Harrison, would you please be so
kind to tell it again or give a link to where I can read it - I am not
American...
>
> Thank you!!
>
> Marei
>
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--
-------------------------
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com

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