A Night With James Dyson

Posted Jun.12.03 :: To Events

Last week I had the good fortune to attend a presentation by James Dyson, inventor of the Dyson vacuum among a collage of other things, including an amazing new washing machine. Confirming my belief that there this a definite pattern to innovation, Dyson struck on many familiar themes:

• Vision. Where others accepted a vacuum that didn’t work well, Dyson saw a problem that needed a better solution. He identified a problem ignored by others and went about solving it.
• Persistence. To create the Dyson vacuum he built over 5,000 prototypes. That’s nearly three a day for five years.
• Confidence. Like all great inventors and visionaries Dyson had great confidence in his idea and kept going no matter what others thought or said.
• Leadership. Although Dyson and his team relied on users to help validate ideas and prototypes, they didn’t look to them for leadership or vision.
• Patience. It takes a long time to succeed. Even after the invention was perfected it still took a decade for the business to develop.

In addition, Dyson noted that true innovation requires a fundamental rethinking of the problem, not simply a new coat of paint. A point that is all too often missed by those that think the Dyson vacuum is all about yellow plastic, that the iMac is nothing but a colored shell, or that Disneyland is just another theme park.

In addition to his comments on innovation and invention, Dyson also offered some interesting perspective on intellectual property and how the patent system fails to protect small inventors.

Nothing quite like the inspiration that accompanies the presence of genius.

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