The idea, however, wasn’t easy to implement. Sometime later, the team realized that they could apply the adhesive directly on the paper.
After a change in management, he was then able to get green light for the project, but failed to come up with any product ideas that could be commercially viable. What’s usually left out from the story is that the Post-It note wasn’t actually born at that moment.įor the next 5 years, the inventor tried to convince management to commercialize the new material, but they didn’t see the potential. The end result was an adhesive that was very weak but reusable as it peeled off without leaving stains. In 1968, 3M was trying to invent a new ultra-strong adhesive, when an experiment went wrong. It took another 17 years before he actually published his findings in his book on the topic, On the Origin of Species. While the visit unquestionably left an impression on him, the theory was actually only developed through the many conversations he had years after the visit with people who had also done research on the topic.Ī good 7 years after the visit, Darwin had just managed to narrow in on the key concepts, and had created a 35-page pencil draft of the theory. In particular, there were species that still lived there and closely resembled those that had already gone extinct elsewhere, which provided him with the key insights for the theory of evolution. What’s more, there were actually not just one but two visits, and Steve Jobs only participated on the second visit when a key employee said he should do it to understand the importance of the innovations they were already working on.įurthermore, it still took 5 more years and countless hours of work after the visit until the Macintosh was finally released.Īs the story would have it, Charles Darwin was inspired by the unique nature of the Galápagos Islands and put the pieces together for the theory of evolution during his visit there. Apple had actually started work on the system, and all of its key innovations, already prior to the visit. In reality, the story is much more complicated. Clearly more than an aha-moment was needed.Īs the story would have it, Steve Jobs decided to create the Macintosh with its graphical user interface after an inspiring visit to Xerox PARC where they had working prototypes with all of the key features that the Macintosh would eventually feature. There were also many other contemporaries who were working on gravity and Newton was certainly quite familiar with their works, some of which even became key concepts of his theory.Įven if the story of a falling apple inspiring him, instead of the works of his contemporaries, is true, it still took him more than 20 years to publish the idea in his landmark work, Principia. He was actually first heard discussing the event many decades later, and even then, he only talked about seeing an apple fall to the ground in his orchard.
If we look back at the story of Newton and the apple, there are a number of issues with it.įirst of all, there’s no record of an apple ever hitting him. The real stories behind some of the famous examples people usually refer to when they talk about big aha moments and overnight successes are often quite different. Let’s not beat around the bush: the unfortunate truth is that almost every one of these stories is either fake, or at best, an exaggeration or oversimplification. The question is, are they true? Are innovations really born out of these miraculous moments of insight? We love to hear stories of these great aha moments. We’ve all heard the story of Newton and the apple.Īccording to the legend, he came up with the theory of gravity when he was sitting under a tree and an apple fell on his head, at which point it all suddenly dawned on him.