hard for a colleague’s iPod Nano watch, designed by Scott Wilson (see page 78). When Mauro
realized there was an Apple store nearby, he led the group on a shopping excursion, where he
bought two. “I can buy five [watches] in one week,” he says with a laugh. “They grab my stomach.”
He has plenty of love to go around. The man owns 65 pairs of shoes. “I married a monster,”
says Elisa.
4Mauro loves the Little Tape Man. “Isn’t he great?” he says, cradling an anthropomorphic tape dispenser in the palm of his hand. Dressed in a white Gucci jacket, black V-neck T-shirt, and black pants, Mauro stands in a 3M conference room surrounded by dozens of his team’s creations. Safety goggles sporty enough to wear on Milan’s fashionable
boulevards. Ankle braces with a clever lace-up system. An air purifier that could be mistaken
for a pricey vase. “But the Tape Man,” Mauro says, “is my mascot.”
In 2004, 3M executives in Europe asked him to focus on rejuvenating tape dispensers. The
novelty of the 1961 invention of transparent Scotch Magic Tape had long since worn off. “The
idea was a product that could almost be animated, living on your high-tech desk,” Mauro says.
“Like a companion.” He brought in Stefano Giovannoni, the Milanese designer who had trans-
mogrified Alessi’s kitchen utensils into artful objects worthy of display. Giovannoni’s Omino
Scotch Tape Dispenser (omino is Italian for “little man”) is a figure crawling on his stomach.
The tape emerges from his head and attaches to his upraised foot. The charming dispenser
appeared in design books and exhibits. It even found a home on the desk of Buckley, the CEO,
who says, “It shows how design can differentiate a simple roll of tape.” But it never crawled its
way into stores. “People here were thinking, Oh, we love it, but is there a market big enough for
this?” Mauro says. “The company was not ready for it.”
In the early years, despite the blessing of top management, who gave Mauro the mandate
to build a design center in Milan, he often met resistance in the labs. He recalls this without
a trace of bitterness. 3M is a 99-year-old bastion of proud left-brain thinkers whose highly
rational and technology-driven approach has served it well. “My biggest roadblock was the
lab directors who were in charge of creating new products,” he says. “ ‘Here arrives this young
guy from Italy, from the periphery of the 3M empire, and he’s telling us how to do innovation?’ ”
Mark Sorlien, a technical director and 30-year employee, whose plain blue button-down
shirt and earnest demeanor evoke a high-school science teacher, was one of the skeptics. “At
POST-ITS
FROM
PORCINI
3M’S DESIGN
CHIEF SKETCHES
A FEW OF HIS
FAVORITE THINGS.
Clockwise from
top left: The new
design center
at 3M headquarters;
imagining uses for
a new touch-screen
tech; 3M’s Hoop
Light; his Philippe
Starck watch; his
renovated home.
2006
Scotch Paper Cutter (Good Design Award)
2007
Scotch Easy-Grip Packaging Tape Dispenser (Good Design Award)
2008
Scotch Fur Fighter Pet Hair Remover (Good Design Award)
2009 MPro 150 Pocket Projector (ADI Design Index)
2010
Scotch Pop-Up Tape Dispenser with precut strips (Good Design Award)
2011
Flexible Light Mat and Hoop Light debut at the Milan Furniture Fair.
