company climate permitted Silver to continue with his efforts

company climate permitted Silver to continue with his efforts 

A jigsaw type article based upon memories of bits and pieces in my memory from 1985 until today. One of the reasons I liked Michael Michalko's book: CREATIVE THINKERING when I first read it to write the testimonial he asked to write for it was that he used mostly stories that do not appear in many other authors' creativity books. This afternoon I read hhis article published today...that focuses on a couple of the stories... Is Your Idea Crazy Enough? Book Giveaway! Healthy Living Editors His version of the Post-It Notes story from THINKERING varies from the one I have been telling, rewriting and retelling based upon more reading and interviews with 3M employees including Art Fry and other R&D people since 1985. He starts the Post-It Note history with Spencer Silver's discovery of "the glue that didn't stick". Based upon my reading and personal interviews with Art Fry I start the story on a Sunday at his church when he one more time was frustrated by his pieces of paper falling out of his hymnal. Then I back up and tell a little backstory about Silver's playing with a Glue that Didn't Stick.  It gets laughs. Each storyteller has their way of telling stories. Then I tell about Art and Spence talking about how they might help each other produce a potential product ("Little Yellow Sticky Things" the original working name). They had both worked at 3M for many years by then. Michael's story about the "built in his basement" machine story is new to me.  Art never shared that one with me.  It is similar to Henry Ford's story about tearing down a wall of his neighbor's outbuilding where he had been tinkering with his first working Model T and thus creating the "first garage" aka Fortune or Forbes story years ago about the significance of THE GARAGE in the US business. I eventually created my version of the Post-It Notes story that I titled "4 Dumb Ideas Create an Industry and Change Mass-Marketers into Micro-Mass Marketers." My second story inside the overall story is about Spence and his glue. One other story of the 4 I have been using now since interviewing Art the first time in St. Paul after his dinner presentation at the ACA meeting in 2002 involves the problems Art and Spence had with getting the "glue that wouldn'ts stick" to stay on the back of the "little yellow things" and not partially come off on other surfaces. 3 story and another partial solution....the white ink (primer) that is on the back of the notes where the glue is placed. 4th partial solution (modified from bits and pieces Art shared) involves the sending of sample packages of the notes to the administrative assistants of the Fortune 500 CEOs and providing a free call back number.   The 4th story I tease audiences with by asking  "Why would that idea be considered dumb?" the phone number was the personal home phone number of the 3M VP of marketing who had been turning done their various arguments or attempts of convincing the BRASS that Post-It notes was a potential viable product for a mass-marketing/mass-manufacturing corporation such as 3M that manufactured and sold their products in the millions of units annually (sandpaper, masking tape, cello tape and others.) Part of my story that I began using in 1985 when Post Notes was already celebrating 12 or 13 years since it first was released by 3M is that the Post Notes success story was one of the factors that caused the current CEO to begin to become a MICRO-MASS-MANUFACTURER/MARKETER and lead them to begin getting rid of 25% of their product lines each year and to begin producing products from conception to production in months instead of the years it took Spence, Art and the others to go from Art's Sunday church service to Post-It Notes on the shelves. When I talked with Art the first time in St. Paul in 2002 after his presentation he shared a variety of anecdotal stories about his experiences with Post It Notes.  Some involved the various managers who tried to stop him. company climate permitted Silver to continue with his efforts  Often in many books authors talk about the famous "15% Rule" at 3M that McNight started in the 40s when he was CEO. I have interviewed 30 or 40 3M employees and past employees at and since the 2002 ACA Conference and then at GRIT meetings (2006) (an unofficial group formed by 3M R&D employees, retires or ex-employees) and then at  ACA meetings in Philly and Austin since 2002. None of them outside of R&D were allowed to do what so often is quoted or believed their managers would allow them to. One of a few stories Art shared about him and his "various" changing middle-managers during the Post-It Notes development stage is the following... Manager after manager had tried various ways to stop him. Art went on vacation one time, unlike him, and when he returned he found the work area where had his various materials from the "the little yellow sticky things" project was completely BARE.  Nothing was left but the furniture. Art, fortunately, knew the janitor and found that they had been told to throw it all away.  But because they had known Art much longer than that manager he/they stored it away for Art, just in case. Art went back to working on it. I asked him him about the "15% Rule". He said that the RULE was practiced and supported for years but various CEOs and managers tried to stop it during their times in office or power. But he also said that ALL of the FELLOWS, such as he and Spence and the other 6 R&D Fellows that presented at the ACA dinner (2002) got away with it because they were FELLOWS. Various GRIT members told me at both lunches I attended that in the mid 00s, the CEO of 3M was focused on control, control, control and profits.  From their perspectives they felt he was forcing 6 Sigma onto the R&D department and other areas and kiling or attempting to kill the INNOVATION SPIRIT at 3M.  The GRIT members to a man or woman all said they had no respect for him.  Some had quit not long after he became CEO or since then. Then in 2006 or 7 I received an email from a 3Mer that I had met during one of the GRIT lunches that said, "there is dancing in the streets in St. Paul today. That #$%^ has left to go #$%^& Boeing. Spence and Art and others at 3M over the years did and accomplish what they did because they were proven, long-standing FELLOWS not because of the 70 year old 15% Rule Myth. I have come across people at several corporations that have told me similar stories or I have read similar stories of the MAVERICKS, REBELS, OUT OF THE BOX, RULE BREAKERS who survived somehow and ended up creating great famous products going around, over, under or simply didn't pay attention to what the rules said or they were told. Unfortuantely, like the greater number, many that Wlater Isaccson has written about in his current book STEVE JOBS, ended up getting FIRED from APPLE during both of Steve Jobs' reigns and in between. One of the books in my collection is an unofficial book about such a rebel inside Kimberly-Clarke.  The book is simply titled MAVERICK. A couple of my contacts, creativity colleagues from CPSI who were or still are employees at KC confirmed some of the stories as possiblly being true. In 1985 I was hired to do an in-house version of my CREATIVE THINKING STRATEGIES program that Battelle Institute marketed fro me for a group of 30 R&D people at KC.  In my pre-program preparation I found that NO official books existed, NO official pamphlets existed, NO official articles existed then or had since the beginning of KC. Ramblings on a Saturday afternoon in Athens.