Discoveries surrounding a new class of impossibly small and improbably powerful compounds could reshape the materials industry — and the world around us.
When 3M introduced Scotch tape in 1930, at the start of the Great Depression, it was a remarkably apt product for a scrimping and saving population — and an extraordinary advance. By combining two recent discoveries, masking tape and DuPont’s impermeable cellophane, 3M scientists had produced a clear, clean, inexpensive binding device, useful for mending rips in a wide spectrum of materials. Musicians used Scotch tape to patch ripped sheet music; women, to fix broken fingernails; accountants, to restore torn ledger books; and banks, to repair ripped currency.
Today, most of us take this enormously durable and useful pro duct for granted. It clutters up our kitchen junk drawer, an early example of the robust innovation culture that once powered the chemicals and materials industries. Between the mid-1920s and 1970s, corporate researchers created a steady stream of breakthrough materials. Cellophane was one, but the most consequential materials were synthetic polymers — complex molecules manufactured by humans. Many of them made possible new classes of commercial products that became enmeshed in our daily lives: nylon, latex, synthetic resin, Bakelite, the synthetic fibers used in contemporary clothing, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene, polyurethane, and silicon.
This story is from the Fall 2017 edition of strategy+business.
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This story is from the Fall 2017 edition of strategy+business.
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