Peter High ,
Contributor
I write about innovative ideas in the world of information technology.
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Sir James Dyson is a modern day Edison. In a world where products are typically released to the public as quickly as possible, Dyson and his team work through hundreds and sometimes even thousands of prototypes of a product before the public sees them. With an estimated net worth of $4.5 billion, Dyson has the wherewithal to operate in such a manner, but I was curious how he developed his methods, and how he influenced his teams before he was considered perhaps the UK’s greatest living innovator.
Despite his vast wealth and resources, that was not the measuring stick that he used in the early days of his career. Instead, he had an obsession to make elegant and easy-to-use products that people wanted to use on a daily basis. As he has explained it, if you look at the design of a ski, you will see the passion of the person who created it. They designed it to use themselves. The same care and passion has not traditionally been put into products like the vacuum cleaner, however. Who has a passion for vacuuming, especially when it is a loud messy process? Dyson was frustrated by these factors when he created a better vacuum cleaner. In the process, Dyson has influenced others who have chosen to innovate in categories of products that had long been thought of as difficult to improve upon. He has also unintentionally spawned a number of imitators along the way. Through it all, Dyson has remained singular in his focus on perfection, realizing that business success would follow. In the process his influence has been felt much further than he might have thought early in his career.
(This is the fourth article in the Technology Influencers series. Past interviewees include Walt Mossberg, David Pogue, and Salman Khan. To read future interviews in the series with Yves Béhar, Jim Goodnight, and Tim Ferriss among others, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Who inspired you to become an inventor and an entrepreneur?
Sir James Dyson: It all happened rather late… I studied classics at school, but I had a love of painting on the side. It was only at London’s Royal College of Art that I stumbled across engineering, accidentally attending a lecture on architecture and structural engineering. After graduating, I was hired by my first mentor, Jeremy Fry. Under him, I worked on a high speed landing craft – the Seatruck. Starting with a plank of wood as a hull, I had to turn the concept into an actual working boat. It wasn’t easy! But Jeremy taught me an Edisonian approach to design: making prototype after prototype until I got it just right.
High: An inventor is only as good as the team that he has around him. In the early days, how did you attract talent?
Dyson: At the beginning, it’s safe to say I didn’t have a plan. I just tried to get clever people to join me by being belligerent; believing in my idea so strongly that I convinced others to do so too (they were penniless engineering graduates, so perhaps it wasn’t too hard!). I started out in a coach house at the end of the garden with a handful of engineers. Now we have 3,000 so I must be doing something right!
High: Nothing creates influence like success. What was the source of your influence before you had a track record of a portfolio of successful products?
Dyson: There wasn’t any, to be honest. When I first introduced the bagless vacuum, I was laughed off by every vacuum and appliance company you could think of. Even when they were satisfied that the technology worked, they were more interested in defending the market for vacuum cleaner bags, which made more money than the vacuums themselves – the razorblade business model. It took one Japanese company to take a chance on me to prove to the industry this was an idea worth investing in.
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High: You have contrasted products like skis or surfboards, which are made by people who are passionate for them with products like wheel barrows, vacuums, and hand dryers, which have historically been made by people who are not passionate for them. How do you develop a passion in your employees for seemingly mundane items like the vacuum cleaner?
Dyson: First, I don’t see them as mundane. Second, I think most engineers’ real passion is for solving problems. That’s what we do at Dyson – above all, we are problem solvers. With DC01, I solved the problem of bagged vacuum cleaners that quickly lose suction, but that was just the first step. There is always a way to make something work better, and that’s what keeps the 3,000 engineering minds at Dyson churning – constantly. Plus, you never really know what working on one problem may lead to – often it can become the solution to something completely different and very exciting. That’s part of the fun. Our Airblade hand dryer is a prime example, a failed application in one technology led to a