The Man Who Invented Scotch Tape
priceonomics.com
priceonomics.com
This is more or less impossible in any organization I know of today. There might be a few exceptions, but by and large 'Im going to prove them wrong' strategy will only attract enemies from the political cartels in middle management these days. You will be marked as some who frequently indulges in insubordination, kind of guy who generally unionizes and can become immediate threat to their own job.
Most managers these days will likely let the company go in loss than have some one below them look smarter to people above. I even seriously doubt if the 20% innovation initiatives in Internet companies work anymore.
>>“He didn’t even know exactly what was needed, but he had the optimism of youth.”
This too is impossible in most places today, even start ups. Which won't hire you until you know some 100 math theorems by heart or have a degree from Ivy leagues.
See also the much-admired concept of "pivot".
And I would disagree with the second point. I've hired a few guys right out of school with no experience, but I recognized they had the right attitude. It's about 50% effective, but when it works out, it's great.
When I was employed by a university; capital purchases had a lower overhead rate than regular expenses. We didn't buy 5 workstations, we bought a five system "cluster".
When I was employed at IBM, we were under expense controls, so anything over $250 needed to be approved by the Research division comptroller. Instead of purchasing a PC, PC parts were purchased and assembled.
The use of the term Scotch in the name was a pejorative meaning "stingy" in the 1920s and 1930s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_Tape
[NB In the UK the equivalent product is sellotape].
It's true that Sellotape has become the generic name for adhesive tape, but Scotch tape is a well established product in it's own right in the UK market.
I was also surprised to see they didn't cover why it was called "Scotch" tape in the article as I find it pretty comical even though I'm also Scottish.
I've always known Scotch Tape to refer to Scotch Magic Tape, the slightly opaque, better-quality sellotape, rather than just generic sellotape. More expensive as well, so I always got told to use it carefully & in moderation when I was a kid. It has a little tartan-pattern strip of paper at the end of the roll so you can find it, I never really thought about why it was named beyond that.
> The bodyshop painter became frustrated with the sample masking tape and exclaimed, "Take this tape back to those Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to put more adhesive on it!" The name was soon applied to the entire line of 3M tapes.
1: the new start point after every dispensing should be easier to get hold of
2: when the tape starts to tear at an angle it can be really difficult to get back to a full width strip
I wish the skunkworks would focus on these scourges :-)
Perforate on an a regular interval/length - e.g., like paper towel rolls. The perforation would help resolve both issues.
I assume we haven't seen exactly this because of the edge cases that it brings up.
This is not true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane#History
Interestingly enough, from the same link, Dupont appears to have invented/optimized a moisture-proof cellulose, which may have been what the author was referring to?