When Post‑It Notes reached desks around the world, few knew the surprising story behind their creation. The journey began in the late 1960s when chemist Spencer Silver—while working at 3M—developed a unique adhesive that was strong enough to cling, yet weak enough to be removable without residue. Because it held only lightly, it seemed useless at first.
Several years later, another 3M employee, Art Fry, realised that Silver’s adhesive could solve his problem: marking his place in a hymn book without damaging the pages. He applied the adhesive to small pieces of paper, creating the prototype that would evolve into the Post-It Note in 1977. What began as a modest fix turned into one of the world’s most recognised office inventions.
This story highlights how invention often comes from experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). The experience of the scientists experimenting with adhesives, the expertise of recognising soft adhesive’s value in a new context, the authoritativeness of a major research company (3M) backing the development, and the trustworthiness of a product that lasted decades in the market—all combined to elevate a “failed” adhesive into a global staple. Their lesson: innovation doesn’t always begin with a grand vision—it sometimes emerges from persistent curiosity and reframing what seems useless.
