September 18, 2013
James
was drawn to art and design from an early age.
His father died when he was nine, leaving James feeling different than
other children, as though he was on his own and had a greater need to prove
himself. At school he excelled in long
distance running, not because he was the best athlete, but because he was
immensely determined.
Ignoring
the advice of his career advisor to become a real estate agent, James attended
the Byam Shaw School of Art for a year, and then moved to London’s Royal
College of Art to finish his formal education.
Studying interior and furniture design, James was hired toward the end
of his college career by an engineering company whose culture was characterized
by plenty of young talent with fresh approaches to problem solving.
His
first boss at the company put him in charge of designing and manufacturing the
Sea Truck, a unique boat that could move cargo in difficult places. At that stage in his career, James had never
designed a product nor sold anything.
But the experience of having permission to make mistakes helped him
learn much more effectively than if he was expected to get everything right the
first time around. During this time, a
wheelbarrow that got stuck in the mud inspired his creation of the Ballbarrow,
which, instead of a wheel, had a large inflatable ball to keep it upright and
make it more maneuverable.
Several
years into his career, James stumbled across a new problem, this time at
home. While vacuuming with a top of the
line Hoover vacuum, he became frustrated with how quickly it lost its
suction. Taking it apart, he determined
that dust was clogging the pores of the bag and blocking the airflow. During a visit to a local sawmill, James
noticed how the sawdust was removed from the air by large industrial
cyclones. He wondered if the same
principle could work on a smaller scale inside a vacuum cleaner. At home, he took his vacuum apart and rigged
it with a miniature cardboard cyclone, then began cleaning a room with it. It picked up more than his old bagged
machine.
Supported
by his wife's salary as an art teacher, James worked on his prototypes. It took him five years and five thousand
prototypes before he released the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner. However, the vacuum industry was not very
supportive of this new invention.
Offering his bagless vacuum to the major manufacturers, James was turned
down by them all. It seemed they were
determined not to interfere with their own sales of replacement bags, an
industry segment worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the companies each
year.
James
found himself at a crossroads, but felt that if he did the sensible thing and
gave up, he would always regret it. So,
instead, he initiated sales of the vacuum himself through catalogs in
Japan. Offered in hot pink, the Japanese
catalog price of James’ G-Force vacuum in his native currency was almost 2000
British pounds… and it sold. After
failing to sell his invention to the major manufacturers, James set up his own
manufacturing company in England, applying for patents and continuing to
improve the design.
It
may not have been an instant success, but more than fifteen years after his
initial idea, James’ bagless vacuum had become the fastest-selling vacuum cleaner
ever made in the UK. Notably, other
major players then attempted to copy his designs with their own versions. Forced to sue for patent infringement, James
and his company eventually won $5 million in damages from one of the largest
vacuum manufacturers in the world, a company who had not only rejected his
original idea, but even inspired it:
Hoover.
James
Dyson is the inventor of the world’s first bagless vacuum cleaner, with
technology that changed the landscape of the industry. When asked for advice on
dealing with adversity, he said, “A lot of people
give up when the world seems to be against them, but that's the point when you
should push a little harder. I use the
analogy of running a race. It seems as
though you can’t carry on, but if you just get through the pain barrier, you'll
see the end and be okay. Often, just
around the corner is where the solution will happen."
Give
yourself permission to make mistakes and you will be giving yourself permission
to persevere. All dreams reside on the
other side of obstacles. Find your own
way through them.
Until next week...
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