“Against the Odds” is the autobiography of vacuum guru James Dyson. Jason recently mentioned it in our internal Campfire chat room: “One of the best books about design, business, invention, and entrepreneurship I’ve ever read. Highly recommended. It’s really inspirational. His persistence is otherworldly. You won’t believe what he went through to get this product to market.” Here’s
one customer’s review of the book at Amazon:
I especially enjoyed the part about the early development of the machine, in which he made something like one version per day for over three years, varying things one at a time, measuring everything to exhaustion, all the while sinking further and further into debt. Edisonian it was, but sometimes that is the only way—the quest for the quick breakthrough emphasized by modern industrial managers can be a real obstacle to progress.
Ahead, a couple of interesting excerpts from articles on Dyson…
The inventor's life, he says in The Independent, is "one of failure".
When you watch a writer on a movie programme tearing up page after page, you think he’s in utter despair. And, in many ways, that’s what it’s like for us, but you learn much more in fact from an experiment which didn’t work out how you intended, but instead sheds some light on possibly another way of doing something. It can get very depressing but then suddenly, one day you make a break through, and that’s very exciting…
You can’t go out and do market research to try to solve these problems about what to do next because usually, or very often, you’re doing the opposite of what market research would tell you. You can’t base a new project two years ahead on current market trends and what users are thinking at the moment. That sounds very arrogant. But it isn’t arrogance. You can’t go and ask your customers to be your inventors. That’s your job…
The article also describes the suspended table in the company’s boardroom:
Mr Dyson thought it might “be nice” to have a table with no legs. At all. So in the company’s boardroom there is a giant glass table that is suspended from the ceiling by four cables. Another cable in the centre anchors it to the floor. And there you have the perfect example of how form fuses with function in Mr Dyson’s world.
In Fast Company, He advocates doing things the wrong way.
I made 5127 prototypes of my vacuum before I got it right. There were 5126 failures. But I learned from each one. That’s how I came up with a solution. So I don’t mind failure. I’ve always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of failures they’ve had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative…
We’re taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It’s exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You’re on it, and you can’t get off.
Related:
“I just think things should work properly” [SvN]
Dyson does it again with “The Ball” [SvN]
This commercial for the Dyson Slim digs at the competition in a lighthearted way, a tough thing to do.
Andy
on 08 May 07Blimey!
He must have been thorugh a lot to get this on the market.
random8r
on 08 May 07It may sound kind of funny, but T’ai Chi masters stipulate the way to supreme success is to “invest in loss” – especially Chen Man Chin, some would argue one of the greatest T’ai Chi masters.
Just ask any skateboarder how many times they’ve had to stuff up a kickflip or a hardflip, or ollie a set of 6 in order to be able to pull of the trick…
Apparently it takes babies a million tries before they can muster the motor skills to grab something once. And then the next time it takes 100,000 times, and from there it gets faster.
Why does our education and society tell us constantly that we should get things right then! :)
- Random8r.
Seth Aldridge
on 08 May 07Thats awesome! I’ve always been a fan of Dyson just can’t afford one at the moment. I love their clean designs and how they market the product. It’s almost like they target designers. :)
Amway Kid
on 08 May 07Another difficulty he encountered was nearly being put out of business by a nasty corporation - in this case, Amway - who totally stole his vacuum design:
http://www.mlmsurvivor.com/inventor.htm
I will say – we had an Amway Cleartrak vacuum as a kid (my parents still have it, two rolls of electrical tape later) and the thing was so powerful it would suck bits of floor padding up as you went. The thing rocked.
Now I’m a Dyson owner, and while it doesn’t remove my floor padding, I’m glad to support someone who didn’t give up.
Jenny
on 08 May 07I don’t understand Dyson products. Consumer Reports and other testers constantly point out they are mediocre at vacuuming carpets, they’re full of design annoyances (no retractable cord!), and very expensive to boot.
Is this marketing of Dyson’s ridiculous journey the cause? Maybe there was just an untapped upscale vacuum market?
andrew Barnett
on 08 May 07I read the book last year; just astonishing. The biggest buzz was realising how similar the design world in London in the 1970s (I think that was the time he talks about) is to the Web 2.0 world now: an exciting time where anything seems possible.
Tom
on 08 May 07This is a great book and full of lessons about the right and totally wrong way to do things.
Mathew Patterson
on 09 May 07Consumer Reports and other testers constantly point out they are mediocre at vacuuming carpets
Maybe most people trust recommendations from other owners and their own experiences. I’ve certainly found that they are great products to use.
Shawn
on 09 May 07I have used my Dyson for over 3 years now. I had the hose rip once and they sent me a new hose overnight. I have never had a vacuum last me as long as the Dyson, and it really never loses it’s sucking power. This is the only vacuum I would purchase from now on.
Rachel
on 09 May 07I share the above sentiments on their customer service. It’s outstanding. Our Dyson’s floorplate was assembled improperly, leading it to crack after about a week’s use. We called them, they apologized profusely, sent us the replacement part, no questions asked.
Dave Sailer
on 09 May 07Merda d’artista: The battle of substance and style.
Hard work can pay off, but sometimes you just have to poop into a can and try selling it.
Found at “The Online Photographer” (http://theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com/2007/05/excremental-value.html) Includes photo (of sealed can.)
“Piero Manzoni, Italian, 1933–1963: Merda d’artista (Artist’s Shit), 1961… Manzoni said he made from his own excrement. Each is a 30-gram can of shit, measuring 4.8×6.5cm, ‘freshly preserved, produced and tinned,’ as stated on the label. This information appears in Italian, French, German and English, against a background pattern produced by repeating the artist’s name in block letters. Because Manzoni sold each can by weight at gold’s daily market price, the shit literally became worth its weight in gold. In retrospect, this has proved to be a bargain. At $35.20 (£18.07) per ounce—the price at which the London Gold Pool (an international consortium of central banks) wanted to fix the precious metal—a tin originally would have cost about $37. That was 1961. Thirty years later, Sotheby’s auctioned one for $67,000. Then, the price of gold had climbed to $374 per ounce. If Manzoni’s initial pricing scheme still held, it should have cost only $395.77. In other words, in 1991 Merda d’artista had outperformed gold in price by more than 70 times.”
See also http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue10/excrementalvalue.htm for photos of owners and more info!
Gal Josefsberg
on 09 May 07Jenny, Consumer Reports is not always accurate, and little features like a retractable cord are not on everyone’s want list. I’ve used one of these vacuums and I can tell you that it does very well in a house with three adults, lots of traffic and two indoor/outdoors long haired cats. Even better, the company has superb customer service, which is a huge plus in my eyes.
GJ http://www.60in3.com
Noel Hurtley
on 10 May 07Very inspiring.
Cindy
on 10 May 07I want this book, I need to review it. Before I bought my Dyson, I did not rave about household appliances. However, I have five cats, two collies and four boys – and despite what Consumer Reports might tell you, this vacuum actually works. With everything which sheds, drips, drops crumbs and tracks mud in my house, I should know.
I love the stories I’ve heard about the company and the inventor. I think this book sounds absolutely brilliant, and very inspiring, too.
JF
on 10 May 07Cindy: I can tell you’ll love the book. Do check it out. It will be worth it.
Jay
on 10 May 07I can see the appeal for vacuuming, but for having boardroom meetings, a table with what is essentially legs on the top, no matter how thin the cables are, sounds pretty terrible. Wouldn’t it mess with sight lines and the ability to pass things across the table? I’ll have to take their word for it that the cables are tight enough that it doesn’t sway, while also not being so tight as to bend the glass too much, but that seems like a challenge too.
Anonymous Coward
on 10 May 07Wouldn’t it mess with sight lines and the ability to pass things across the table?
Ummm… Apparently not? They seem to like it so much that they talk about it. If it sucked I doubt they’d be talking about it. Open your mind.
This discussion is closed.