by Sheridan Winn

It is a truism to say you cannot miss something you do not have. But there are some products so useful that, as soon as they are introduced, they fill a niche in our lives and are absorbed immediately into popular consciousness. Sometimes they are the simplest things.

Take the Post-it® Note. How did we remember tasks and appointments before we had these bits of sticky colored paper that pepper our files, desks, phones and doors? Stick one to the front of a file and it will be the first message people read: It is an active reminder, a call to action. Simple the Post-it® Note may be, but since its launch in 1980, it has revolutionized office communications.

The invention of the Post-it® Note is a classic example of innovative serendipity. In 1968, Dr. Spencer Silver, a 3M research scientist, was attempting to design a strong acrylate adhesive. Instead he created a weak adhesive that could be peeled off and repositioned.
Silver extolled the potential of his new adhesive, but nobody knew what to do with it. It was not until 1973 that a product niche was found—by Art Fry, a new-product development researcher, who famously thought up the concept of the Post-it® Note while in church; as bits of scrap paper fell out of his hymnal, Fry realized Silver’s adhesive would make for a reliable bookmark.

Test markets failed to show any consumer interest: People could not fathom uses for the sticky slips of paper. But Fry persisted, and after a massive consumer sampling strategy in 1979, the concept took off. A year after the 1980 launch, 3M named the Post-it® Note its most outstanding new product. Today, the brand sells in more than a hundred countries and includes thousands of products in a multitude of shapes, sizes and colors.

If ever a product burst onto public consciousness, it is the iPod. Since the iconic digital media player was unveiled in October 2001, Apple has sold over 42 million units, reported CEO Steve Jobs at the Macworld Expo in January 2006. In the first quarter of the fiscal year 2006, Apple sold 14 million iPods: That’s 100 every minute, and more than three times the number sold a year ago.
The iPod launch advertising strapline ran, “A thousand songs in your pocket,” but, like the Post-it® Note, its use has evolved. Writers use iPods to make travel blogs and to file press reports. The Children’s PressLine uses them for scoring political interviews, and Maine’s Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum uses iPods for exhibition tours.
Calvin Garbin, a University of Nebraska–Lincoln psychology professor, records his lectures on an iPod, then puts them up on the Web site for his students to download. “For 30 years, I’ve said if I could just touch my forehead to theirs and pass on the information…” he told the Washington Post. “This technology, to me, is an approximation of that.”

The iPod halo has touched the media industry: Apple iTunes now sells 3 million songs a day. In February 2006, Warner Music reported that its sales of digital music had trebled in the past year. Walt Disney Studios and Clear Channel Communications are the first major media companies in the United States to advertise movies through iPod technology.
A lifestyle product we cannot seem to do without is the George Foreman Grill, which caught the wave of healthy, low-fat cooking. Endorsed by the heavyweight boxing champion, Salton Inc.’s “Lean Mean Fat-Reducing Machine” claims to “knock out the fat.” It is one of the great innovations in kitchen appliances, with over 55 million sales since its introduction in 1995. George Foreman is said to have made over $150 million from sales of the grill—more money than he made in his entire boxing career.
ThinkGeek’s Web site (“stuff for the smart masses”) shows a George Foreman USB iGrill, a “low-fat, high-bandwidth solution to your networked cooking needs.” The grill, it says, conveniently connects to your home or office PC using USB 2.0 technology and provides a Web-based cooking interface.

Press the Add to the Cart button for this useful device and you’ll get “Ha! Gotcha!” Laugh you may, but it is only a matter of time until this product hits the stores—and when it does, we will all wonder how we ever managed before.
Sheridan Winn is a freelance business and lifestyle journalist based in the UK. Her insightful and entertaining features are published regularly in newspapers and journals on four continents.