In 1930, his supervisor sent a young engineer to work on the floor of a Minneapolis auto body shop. The purpose of the work visit was to review the performance of their employer’s main product, industrial grade sandpaper, in actual use while sanding an automobile door. The young man’s name was Richard Drew.
While in the repair shop, young Mr. Drew was exposed to a tougher work environment than he was used to. The store floor was noisy, dirty, and, well, quite profane. Much of the profanity was related to the difficulty repairers experienced trying to perfectly match paint panels and stripes to car bodies. They just didn’t have any rudimentary tools other than a steady hand and a line of sight to make perfectly smooth straight lines that didn’t overlap.
Richard Drew became curious and began considering options to simplify the process of neatly painting multi-color paint on car bodies. His invention was ingenious, elegantly simple, and is a standard in every DIYer’s toolbox to this day. He created “masking tape”. Hardly any painting job gets done on a home or business that doesn’t use masking tape to protect and finish the edges.
Arthur Fry was also looking for a simple answer to a personally vexing problem. Mr. Fry continually lost his place in his church’s hymnal when he attended Sunday services at his church. He hated bending or “crumpling” the pages. He did not want to mark or damage the hymnal in any way. The bookmarks would simply fall off the hymnal.
He was also a resident of the Minneapolis area and decided to look for a solution at his workplace. Mr. Fry turned to a colleague, Spencer Silver, who was working on a new type of glue with minimal adhesion properties. He borrowed some of Spencer’s prototype glue and applied some to the edge of a small square of paper. When applied to paper, the glued square adhered comfortably, but was easily removed without damaging the host paper.
In the 1970s, Fry and Spencer’s employer registered his invention and began trying to commercialize the product. At first there was little consumer interest. Then, in 1979, almost on the verge of giving up, the Company decided to extensively test the product in office supply stores. The response was overwhelming. The Post-It note was born.
Masking tape and Post It Note were marketed internationally by the giant (today) 3M Company of Minneapolis. Employees Richard Drew, Arthur Fry, and Spencer Silver had invented much-needed and valuable consumer products that have generated billions in sales and profits for 3M. However, all three were simply 3M employees.
In most companies, certainly mature ones, employees sign releases assigning all rights to the product of their work to the employing company. Drew, Fry, and Silver signed such releases and were rewarded accordingly by 3M. However, they were rewarded as employees, not entrepreneurial inventors. A bonus and raise will always be appreciated, but there was no profit sharing available for your big advances.
These men were working and creating on company time, using company resources, and had signed over all rights to their work at 3M. They had good jobs, working for a big company, but they were no longer entitled to the profits generated by their creativity.
Imagine the wealth and fame these inventors could have enjoyed had they commercialized these products themselves. Not everyone has a business constitution. In fact, most people shouldn’t leave paid employment to pursue the pipe dream of launching a product or business. Yet the opportunity to create the next sticky tape, or Post-It Note, is seized every day, here in America, by someone.
As an entrepreneur you completely expose yourself to the whims of the market. As an employee, you enjoy a corporate cocoon with protective layers of resources and assets at your fingertips. But think about it. If you could invent the next breakthrough in a new product, in the hope of commercial success, would you be satisfied with a bonus and pay raise, or would you seek the opportunity to fully harvest and control your product and its destiny? I know what I would do.
