Pacemakers, Post-it notes and Spam rank among Minnesota's best-known inventions. But creative Minnesotans devised hundreds of other products we take for granted. Sharon Carlson asked the Star Tribune's reader-powered reporting project, Curious Minnesota, to outline Minnesota's notable inventors and their creations. "Minnesota is really a great source of invention over the last century," said patent attorney Benjamin Edlavitch, president of the Minnesota Inventors Hall of Fame, a nonprofit organization. "The 'why' is probably the large corporate presence and the large academic presence in this state. Specifically, it's hard to say. Maybe it's something in the lakes." John Banovetz, chief technology officer at 3M, said there's a lot of cross-pollination among the many different industries, universities and colleges that call Minnesota home. That's important, because "innovation happens at the interfaces of different disciplines," he said. Tap the link in our bio to read the full story...