Intrapreneurship: Corporate Entrepreneurship ◾ 21
Large corporations such as IBM, General Mills, AT&T, and Apple have
been amply rewarded by the market for their intrapreneurial prowess,
although the ubiquitous Post-it
®
Notes has become legendary in the annals
of intrapreneurship. 3M’s policy of allowing employees to use 15% of their
time and resource on pet projects, known as “bootleg time,”
6
is more fully
discussed in the following paragraphs.
2.3.1 The 3M Illustration
The Post-it
®
Note was originally a solution looking for a problem. In 1972,
Dr. Spencer F. Silver patented (U.S. patent 3,691,140) a unique paper adhe-
sive that permitted easy removal without tearing, and permitted re-bonding
without application of additional adhesive; ironically, the 3M scientist didn’t
know what to do with his discovery. Six years later, a colleague of Dr. Silver,
Art Fry, remembered the light adhesive when he was daydreaming about a
bookmark that would stay put in his church hymnal. While the intrapreneur
did not receive any prots from his invention, he was rewarded with a pro-
motion that included a pay raise and many company benets.
A Post-it
®
Note (or Sticky Note) is stationery with a re-adherable strip of
adhesive on the back designed for temporarily attaching notes to documents
and other surfaces. In 1968, Dr. Spencer Silver, a chemist at 3M in the United
States, was attempting to develop a super-strong adhesive; instead, he acci-
dentally created a “low-tack,” reusable, pressure-sensitive adhesive. For ve
years, Silver promoted his invention within 3M, both informally and through
seminars, without much success. In 1974, a colleague of Silver’s, Art Fry,
who had attended one of Silver’s seminars, used the adhesive to anchor his
bookmark in his hymnbook. Fry then further developed the idea by tak-
ing advantage of 3M’s ofcially sanctioned “permitted bootlegging” policy.
3M launched the product in stores in 1977 in four cities under the name
“Press ‘n Peel,” but its results were disappointing. A year later, 3M issued free
samples to residents of Boise, Idaho, and 94% of the people who tried them
said that they would buy the product. On April 6, 1980, the product debuted
in U.S. stores as “Post-it Notes.” In 1981, Post-its
®
were launched in Canada
and Europe.
There were actually two accidents that led to the invention of the Post-it
®
Note. The rst was Spencer Silver’s creation of the Post-it’s adhesive. According
to the former Vice President of Technical Operations for 3M Geoff Nicholson
(now retired), in 1968, Silver was working at 3M trying to create super-strong