Could you point me in the right direction to find out more about Post-It notes? The most in-depth thing I was able to find is this article, which hints at what you are talking about but doesn't go into the full details:
So it was actually two inventors at 3M. Spencer Silver discovered the low-tack adhesive in 1968 and spent 5 years promoting it as a product within the company. He eventually hooked up with Art Fry at 3M who recognized its utility for small notes. In order to get the company to recognize it as a useful product, (as I heard the story) they had to personally make the post-it pads and distribute them to the secretaries all around the company.
Eventually some executives got hooked on the notes. The initial product launch in 1977 was deemed a failure. It wasn't until 1980 that the product was re-launched successfully.
So even after the chemistry was done, 3M's own product developers had to do 8-12 years of internal evangelism to get this new product launched to consumers.
http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/frysilver.html