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The Mistake That Stuck
How a failed glue experiment turned into one of the most iconic inventions on the planet.
Dennis Geelen
December 02, 2025
In 1968, 3M scientist Spencer Silver was trying to invent the world’s strongest adhesive.
Instead, he created the opposite: a weird, low-tack glue that stuck lightly, peeled cleanly, and didn’t seem useful for… well, anything.
For years he walked around the company pitching it as a “solution without a problem,” hoping someone would figure out what to do with it.
Until someone did…
A Solution Presents Itself
That someone turned out to be Art Fry, another 3M employee who happened to sing in his church choir.
Fry was annoyed that his paper bookmarks kept falling out of his hymn book. One Sunday, he remembered Silver’s “not-very-sticky” adhesive and thought, “Wait… what if I could make a bookmark that actually stays put?”
That tiny moment, a choir-room frustration meets a failed adhesive, became the spark.
Time to Test it Out
The two teamed up and created a small pad of yellow notes (yellow only because that was the scrap paper available next door).
The first test launch actually flopped. But when 3M gave away free samples in Boise, the famous “Boise Blitz”, people loved them.
In 1980, Post-it Notes officially launched nationwide, and the rest is office-supply history.
The Perfect Accidental Equation
What I love about this story is how unintentionally brilliant it is. A failed experiment + a small everyday annoyance + a lucky connection = a product used billions of times a year.
None of it was planned. All of it required noticing something odd, holding onto it, and revisiting it later.
What This Means for You
So this week, take a second look at the thing you dismissed too fast: the odd idea, the abandoned project, the half-formed thought in your notes app.
It might not look like much now… but neither did the world’s most famous sticky note.
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