Weather

Made it home safely yesterday after a rather hazardous journey from the school to my home. 6 hours of gridlock, but by all accounts I was one of the lucky ones.

Some friends were stranded on the M8 for 12 hours and some unlucky colleagues spent the night in Hamilton Grammar - though I see only Hamilton College made it on national TV!

On a business note, perhaps pupils can actually problem solve and think of ways our infrastructure could cope better with such issues.

Everytime a city or a nation wins a World Cup bid or Olympic bid one of the factors mentioned is improved infrastructure. What benefits could that bring to Scotland?

A larger and more improved motorway network?

A better and more integrated public transport system for the trains, buses and subways?

It is all very interesting as my relations in Minnesota are iced up for basically 6 months of the year and yet they still get to work and go to school no problem. Mind you my cousin's husband is actually a school caretaker who is in at 5am and drives the snowplough to unblock the car park. American cars are so much hardier than ours!

Joe - I salute you!

Famous Products - 3M Post-it Note

The Post-it note came about by a bit of chance and being aimed at the wrong target market!

In 1968, the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M) developed a sticky, re-usable adhesive. A scientist called Spencer Silver was the inventor and he tried to gain recognition and support for the product within 3M.

Six years later, with success eluding Silver, a co-worker called Art Fry ised the sticky adhesive as a hymnbook bookmark! Fry - who was not the inventor but was certainly an innovator - developed the product and helped lead the commercialization process. After an unsuccessful launch in 1977 due to poor customer trials, a better trial resulted in a full product launch within 12 months to North America and Europe.

The Post-it then became a must have for every office stationery supply!

Think of such a simple idea and product and how it has totally transformed the way we operate in our daily lives.

Students no longer highlight their textbooks; they use post-its to mark important sections, meaning they get more money back when they sell on their pricey textbooks.

Office staff can disseminate work to colleagues via a handy post-it on top of a circular or memo.

The list is endless and another example of a great product that found it's market by serendipity.