Mr Hotchkiss and the stapler

I asked a group of managers in Tokyo to name their personal favourite inventions. We got a diverse range of proposals from them. Then they asked me for mine.

The humble paper staple, together with its stapler, I said. Such a deceptively simple piece of engineering.

It overcame all the disadvantages of its celebrated predecessor, the paperclip. The great adman, David Ogilvy, exhorted us to abandon the paperclip in favour of the staple in his Confessions of an Advertising Man. I never travel without it.

But who invented it? I’d never known. Well, they told me in Tokyo, in Japan it’s called a Hotchkiss. Was Mr Hotchkiss by any chance the inventor?

Apparently not. He seems merely to have been the importer of the product to the land of the rising sun.

So who did invent it? This is not quite so simple a question as one might expect.

George W McGill patented an early version in the USA in 1866 and continued to develop his product through the 1880s. Meanwhile CH Gould, working in parallel with McGill, took out a patent in England in 1868. Rather like early mobile phones, these initial staplers were bulky and heavy.

The slim and elegant product that we know today was invented by another Englishman, John Munford. He sold it to his employer in the early twentieth century (at a low price) and never has been properly recognised for his work.

Hiring people better than yourself

Among the many important things that the legendary adman David Ogilvy wrote, this is one of the best:

“Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.”*

I’ve always endeavoured to do this, not always successfully, of course. (Indeed one or two of you may even read this.)

It does seem important enough to take on board at a personal level. Of course, this takes a certain amount of courage and self-belief. But then if we lack those qualities, we’re in trouble anyway, sooner or later.

And then it’s good to talk to HR about it. We know from research that they are usually on a quite different page. It’s of particular importance if you need innovation and creativity living within your organization.

Now I notice that it’s also the mantra within Google. They are currently worth tons more than the business that Ogilvy started. It’s the centenary of David Ogilvy’s birth this year. Let’s see if Google lasts as long.

*From his Confessions of an Advertising Man of 1963. Aside from its now unacceptable (though unconscious) sexism, it’s still worth reading, carefully.