Art Fry still holds 3M’s top technical title – corporate scientist. Yet, this soft-spoken Midwesterner spoke loudly when he was trying to convince his company about the usefulness and his inherently sell-itself invention called Post-it® Notes.

Now retired, Fry keeps his hand in technology, through networking and "wholesale mentoring". He’s also become a spokesman on innovation and 3M’s unique culture. Here’s a chemical engineer who, by his own admission, actually can talk, and he did so in “down home” fashion May 15, 2007, at the Eastman Worldwide Innovation Conference, in Kingsport, Tennessee.

With the conference theme “Scaling the Innovation Summit", Fry says that his invention – and all inventions – not only require innovation, they require input from the customer.

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