Failure is to be welcomed, rather than avoided. Learning by failure is a remarkably good way of gaining knowledge. “ Learning by trail and error, or experimentation, can be exciting, the lessons learned deeply ingrained. Invention is often more about endurance and patient observation than brainwaves. “ Research is about conducting experiments, accepting and even enjoying failures, but going on and on, following a theory garnered from observing the science. ‘Wait a minute, that should have worked, now why didn’t it?’” I even thought about calling this book ‘James Dyson: Failure’, but was talked out of it because it might give the wrong impression.” It is more about failure than ultimate success. That eureka moment! But it rarely is, I’m afraid. Folklore depicts invention as a flash of brilliance. But when you have set yourself an objective that, if reached, might pioneer a better solution to existing technologies and products, you become engaged, hooked and even one-track-minded. “This might sound boring and tedious to the outsider. I’ve included some of my favourite extracts below.
Without perseverance and resilience beyond the scope of all but the rarest of people, these businesses would die on the vine. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about successful business founders, it’s that there is no straight line to success. Why create a product which puts at risk that perpetual revenue stream? In the case of vacuum cleaners, the incumbents were making billions selling replacement bags to their customers. Hamilton Helmer labelled this power ‘ Counter-Positioning’ in his best-selling book on competitive strategy, ‘ 7 Powers.’ The opportunity arises when a newcomer adopts a new, superior business model which the incumbent doesn’t mimic due to anticipated damage to their existing business. One of my favourite insights from the book relates to the opportunity set afforded Dyson by the vacuum industry’s incumbent players.
James Dyson’s recently published memoir, ‘James Dyson - Invention: A Life,’ is a tale of constant innovation, incredible challenges overcome and the deep resilience required to create one of today’s leading technology companies. He recalled, ‘ I found the centrifuge dust extraction principle of the cyclonic separator utterly fascinating.’
Seeking a solution, Dyson asked around the trade and eventually arrived at a cyclonic separator. Contrast that with today, Sir James Dyson is the UK’s fourth richest resident with a net worth of c.US$9.7 billion.ĭyson struck on the idea of a cyclonic vacuum from his experience manufacturing his first product, the ‘Ballbarrow.’ Applying paint to the metal frame created havoc in the factory - excess waste and mess.
Labouring through trial and error, Dyson overcame a brutal patent abuse, endless rejections from both venture capitalists and the world’s leading appliance manufacturers whilst managing an ever expanding overdraft he didn’t extinguish until the age of forty-eight. Incredibly, that’s the number of hand-made prototypes James Dyson built over a four year period before he finally achieved success with his cyclonic vacuum cleaner. So how about 5,127 times? How does that grab you? Henry Ford and his self-propelled vehicle, Walt Disney and his animated pictures, Alexander Bell and his telephone and even the Wright Brothers and their aeroplane all were examples of people who failed many, many times before they eventually succeeded, often facing distressing financial hardship along the way.īut if you were one of these people and were inventing something that could be potentially momentous and change things forever, at what point would you give up after encountering multiple failures? After 10 attempts? 50? What about 1,000? You’d have to think you were on a road to nowhere if you had failed that many times. Often what appeared on the surface to be an “overnight success’' actually took years to achieve. When you look back in history at some of mankind’s greatest achievements, one of the things that stands out in almost every case is that those successes came with a lot of blood, sweat and tears and an incredible amount of persistence.