Time is not money

One night in 1933 Percy Shaw was driving to the pub

It was a journey he knew well

Along a dangerous road with a steep drop on one side

As he went round a corner everything went pitch black

Even with his headlights on he couldn’t see anything

The reflective barriers down either side of the road had been taken up

Suddenly, he saw two bright yellow lights shining at him

He slammed on his breaks

And got out to see what it was

It was a cat

The two yellow lights were the reflections in its eyes

Reflections that had stopped him driving straight off the side of the cliff

In that second Percy Shaw had an idea 


Studs in the road that would reflect drivers’ headlights

Keeping them safely on the road

Soon after he created the Catseye


By 1937 the Ministry of Transport were ordering forty thousand a week

Percy Shaw’s split-second idea

Made him a millionaire many times over

He knew that the time it takes to have an idea

Has no bearing on what the idea is worth

He valued his idea against road safety

Not the process it was created in - a split second braking incident

Agencies need to find a way of being a bit more Percy Shaw

And get paid for how good our work is

Not how long it takes us to do it

Because as Percy proved

Time is not money