James Dyson — Founder of Dyson and Master Inventor on How to Turn the Mundane into Magic
Full podcast here: The Tim Ferriss Show #530: Sir James Dyson — Founder of Dyson and Master Inventor on How to Turn the Mundane into Magic. All quotes below are from James Dyson:
Whenever I look at anything, I wonder how it works, and then I wonder how it could work better. Could I make it work better? Is there a technology I could use? Is there a way I can reconfigure it? Is there a radical breakthrough I could do by lateral thinking that would make a huge difference? So I just think like that all the time.
I’m not a very cooperative person.
On the development of the Dyson Dual Cyclone:
It’s a process of learning by experimentation. And it wasn’t enjoyable every day because failures are not enjoyable necessarily. I’d come home in the evening covered with dust and tell poor Deirdre what had happened that day. And she tried to stay interested as we were getting more and more into debt. It took three or four years, it was a long haul.
In long-distance running, there is this thing called the pain barrier. There’s a point 3/4 of the way through the race where it’s really starting to hurt and you can’t see the end and you want to give up. You go through that process with every invention, with every technological breakthrough.
It looks brilliant at the end because from where you started and where you’ve ended up, there’s such a difference. There’s such a big leap. So it looks like an act of brilliance. But it wasn’t. It was just hard work. It always takes four times as long as you think it will, and it always costs more money.
What kept me going was that I was making progress, and I was convinced that it was the way vacuum cleaners should be.
I had no plan B. It had to work. I was pinning everything on it. Betting the house literally, because I had to put the house up as collateral for the bank loan.
I think my friends all thought I was mad. Reducing myself and my family into penury.
I had no idea whether anyone wanted to buy this product. No idea at all. I hadn’t done any market research, and you can’t really go and ask someone whether they want to buy a vacuum cleaner that doesn’t have a bag.
The whole point is you’ve got to back your own instincts. You can’t get help on this. You’ve got to take the risk. Sometimes you’re going to be okay, and sometimes you’re not.
What you’re really asking about is market research. Is it worth doing? Can you learn from it? The answer is not much, and you certainly can’t rely on it. So again, you have to back yourself. You have to back your own judgment.
We charged three to four times the price of everybody else.
On his admiration for Akio Morita, the founder of Sony:
Think of the Walkman. His company didn’t want to do the Walkman because it wouldn’t record. Akio Morita brought out a tape recorder that didn’t record. It played back only. His own company thought it was completely mad, but that’s brilliance. That takes balls to say, “I’m going to bring out a product that doesn’t do what people think it’s going to do, but it’s going to enlighten their lives.”
[David’s note. I read Akio Morita’s autobiography Made In Japan: Akio Morita and Sony. Akio is one of the most influential entrepreneurs in history. Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos have both talked about applying lessons they learned from Akio to their business. I made a podcast about the key insights. It is Founders #102.]
I admire Mr. Honda for a slightly different reason. He was the master of iterative improvement. He was never satisfied. He was always making maybe little changes at a time, but in the end, all those little changes added up to quantum leap.
That’s something to never forget. You must never be satisfied. Always be dissatisfied, always be unhappy about your product. Keep on making it better and better.
Another founder James admires:
Frank Whittle, who developed the jet engine. That is a great story because no one believed in him. I’ve got huge admiration for him. That was an extraordinary development. Turning an engine that had 12,000 moving parts, the Spitfire engine, the air engines at the time had all these moving parts, were hugely vulnerable, one bullet through cooling pipe and the plane has had it, dives, and the pilot has to bail out. So he turned it into one moving part. It’s just brilliance, breathtaking brilliance.
On the “failure” of the Dyson washing machine:
This is the one and only time I’ve ever listened to the marketing department, who said, “If you charge less, you will sell more.” Actually, we charged less and sold fewer.
I actually discovered I liked relying on myself, rather than having to be collegiate and share decisions with somebody else because it was all down to me. The whole risk was mine. I’d evaluate the risk myself and work it out myself. I just found that a much easier way for me to work.
It’s just much better to be one-track-minded and just thinking entirely about the product.
It’s not who I am or what the company is or what it looks like that’s important. Is the product going to excite people, and do the job properly, and last a long time? That’s all that matters actually.
I believe in recruiting people with enthusiasm, lack of knowledge, lack of experience, people who are not afraid to make mistakes, not afraid to try a new path.
The theme of the book [ Invention: A Life by James Dyson ] is really that you don’t have to be an expert and in fact, experts are often unhelpful. You have to have enthusiasm, curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, and determination. And those are the things that will solve all the world’s problems.
Experience is baggage that can get in the way. What you need is someone saying, why, why is it like that? Why do you have to do it like that? And it stops you dead in your tracks. It forces you to not follow the path that everybody else follows.
Engineers at Dyson build their own prototypes. You don’t give it to someone else to build. You go and build it yourself. It’s through the building of the prototype that you experience failure. You learn how you might change it and improve it.
Making it with your own hands is terribly important. We were given two hands and a brain —you should use both at the same time. Using your hands is not a lowly activity, it’s useful. Man’s always done it.
Full podcast: The Tim Ferriss Show #530: Sir James Dyson — Founder of Dyson and Master Inventor on How to Turn the Mundane into Magic.
James’ Books:
Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson. [I’ve read this book multiple times. Founders #25 and Founders #200]
Invention: A Life by James Dyson. [This book arrived yesterday. Podcast coming soon.]
If you are reading this and don’t already listen to Founders— here is the link to start learning from history’s greatest entrepreneurs.
—David