There are 2 James Dyson autobiographies. 1 is available in all good bookshops for £5-£10. You’ll need to search far and wide for the other, and drop at least 10x the money on getting a copy.
I’ve read both. ‘Against the Odds’ – the expensive, secret one – is much more interesting. It’s a (sometimes too) unfiltered look at Dyson’s early struggle and success, told by someone with a huge chip on their shoulder who finally feels vindicated by the huge success of their invention after years of graft and failure. I think I paid £65 for it, and I think it was worth it.
Here’s the biggest thing I took from it
There might be a better way of doing it
Vacuum cleaners existed for nearly a century before Dyson’s bagless cyclone-powered DC01 hit the market. In that time, there had been very little innovation and the market leaders were entrenched. New models were released every now and then and the public bought them, but they were all based on the same basic way of doing things from the early 1900s.
As Dyson’s legend goes, he noticed a flaw in them; vacuum cleaners revolved around a disposable bag that collected the dust and other nasties from your floor, but this approach led to crappy results. After the first few minutes, the ‘suck’ on the vacuum sucked – it was clogged and weak. Inspired by cyclone technology he’d seen in another setting, he set about designing and testing a bagless vacuum cleaner that would be much better at sucking, and would suck less.
His testing showed it worked. Over thousands of prototypes, he got to a point where he had what he was sure was a better way, and he set about trying to license his technology to manufacturers. And he failed miserably
No one was interested – not the incumbents, not other electrical manufactures, no one. All he kept hearing was ‘If there was a better way to make a vacuum cleaner, Electrolux or Hoover would have done it’.
Plus – the incumbents had a nice little business going selling bags. Why would they want to go bagless?
Time and again he spoke to everyone he could think of, and none of them saw enough in the bagless cyclone vacuum cleaner to back him. In the end, he had to do it himself – and it’s fair to say it’s gone pretty well. Dyson’s company did £6.5bn in revenue in 2022.
..then why hasn’t it been done yet?
So – there are better ways out there, even if the 8 or so billion others that share this planet with you haven’t made that better way happen yet.
There’s so many reasons why the better way might not have made it ‘out there’ yet;
It could be a problem that no-one’s spent much time on
The incentives might not be there to make the innovation happen yet
Incentives might exist to keep the status quo as it is
You might have genuinely come up with a new way of doing things that makes sense that others just haven’t thought of before
Technological advances might have made your idea possible for the first time
Dyson isn’t the only person who’s made new happen
Wheels were first added to suitcases in 1970 by Bernard Sadow. Before then, luggage was lugged. Now, you wouldn’t buy a suitcase without wheels.
Dick Fosbury’s ‘Flop’ in the pole vault competition of the 1968 olympics was the first time the world had seen someone fling themselves over the bar headfirst on their back. In this summer’s olympics, you won’t see a single person take any other approach.
Have confidence that there might be a better way
In Against the Odds, it becomes clear that Dyson is an incredibly confident person. 10 years of nos and knock-backs didn’t dent his confidence one bit.
What i’m taking away from this is a little bit more confidence in working on new things in established places, a little bit more confidence that we haven’t already got everything figured out, and a little bit more confidence that those little ideas we come up with might just have legs to them.