One of the drawbacks of an otherwise fulfilling career with a business and financial news organisation is the paucity of stories one has with which to impress schoolchildren. On the Financial Times, we do not often get to interview Beyoncé, Justin Bieber or Zac Efron.

When I speak at schools, I know that students will not be much taken with the chief executives and finance directors I could mention. I usually tell them that I have interviewed Sir Richard Branson, which elicits mild interest, and Lord Alan Sugar, once a computer entrepreneur but now known for The Apprentice television series.

In future talks I should mention Arthur Fry, though. Students may not have heard of him, but they will know what he invented. I interviewed Fry nearly three decades ago at the St Paul, Minnesota, headquarters of 3M, one of the world’s most innovative companies. Fry had been puzzling about what 3M could do with a weak adhesive a colleague had devised. Few could see the point of a glue that, while it kept its stickiness, did not really stick. Singing in his church choir, frustrated at how the paper bookmarks in his hymn book kept fluttering to the floor, Fry suddenly saw what he could do with that weak adhesive – and the Post-it note was born.