The Guide to Entrepreneurship

22 ◾ The Guide to Entrepreneurship: How to Create Wealth for Your Company

adhesives for use in the aerospace industry in building planes. Instead of a

super-strong adhesive, though, he accidentally created an incredibly weak,

pressure-sensitive adhesive agent called Acrylate Copolymer Microspheres.

This adhesive did not interest 3M management, as it was seen as too

weak to be useful, but nonetheless had two interesting features. First, when

stuck to a surface, the adhesive could be peeled away without leaving any

residue. Specically, acrylic spheres only stick well to surfaces where they

are tangent to the surface, thus allowing weak adhesion to be peeled easily.

Second, the adhesive is re-usable, thanks to the spheres’ incredible strength ...