Innovation

I watched a television show on PBS one evening in which the speaker was discussing entrepeneurship and creativity. During the program, the speaker talked several times about 3M and how they turned lemons into lemonade over their corporate history. The organizers of 3M bought some land in Northern Minnesota upon which was located a large amount of rock. The organizers bought the land with the idea that they would quarry the rock and use it for any number of industrial and building uses.

Unfortunately, the organizers found that the rock located on their property was too sandy to be used for the purposes for which they intended. At this point, the organizers began to wonder what purpose they might use the rock. Apparently, they decided to use the rock for the production of sand paper, which made the company quite successful.

At this point, 3M became a company which depended on the creativity of its employees and management. During the sixties, the R&D people at 3M developed a glue which, unfortunately, was not very adhesive. After working with this glue, the R&D people put the glue aside and worked on other formulas for glue. One of the R&D people sang in the choir of his church. When this particular scientist participated in the choir, he usually placed pieces of paper in the hymn book to mark his place during the service. Unfortunately, the pieces of paper tended to fall out of the hymnal during the service.

This particular scientist remembered the glue which didn't hold. He went back to work on Monday and borrowed some of the glue and attached it to square pieces of paper in order to provide a marker which would stick in the short term, but was easily removed from the hymnal without damage to the book. Pretty soon, these glued note papers were marketed to businesses all over the country and 3M had another story of innovation.

In the late part of the Nineteenth Century, a Swiss scientist was working on a new drug for the treatment of schitzophrenia. He was working on this project for quite awhile when he thought he might have something which would do the trick. At some point in the development, the scientist decided to try the drug on himself. Taking a small dose, he felt no effect from the drug. Thinking he had failed, the Swiss scientist closed up his labratory, put his coat on, climbed up on his bicycle and rode homeward.

The next day, the scientist found himself lying in a ditch alongside the road upon which he had previously been riding. He had lost about a half a day after he had succumbed to the drug he had created. I don't know if he decided at that point that his drug would not be an effective treatment for schitzophrenia. But the drug stuck around western culture for other purposes.

For this reason, a Psychology professor from Harvard and his colleagues would have something else to try after they came off the peyote buttons they tried on a trip to the American Southwest. The professor: Dr. Timothy Leary. The drug: LSD.

These stories are a reminder that human creativity can produce amazing results. But there are limits to everything.