James Dyson
“It must have been some time in 1979 that I first heard the words, ‘But James, if there were a better way to make a vacuum cleaner, Hoover or Electrolux would have invented it.’” — James Dyson, Against the Odds
James Dyson built 5,127 prototypes before his bagless Dual Cyclone vacuum worked.
It started with frustration.
He bought the top selling vacuum brand on the market and found it was as useless as the one he already had. The bags always clogged.
So he tore the bag off and stuck a cereal box he shaped into a cyclone in its place. It was the same principle he had seen pulling sawdust out of lumber mills. It didn’t clog.
From there:
5,127 prototypes. Three mortgages on his house. A garden shed workshop with no heat, no phone, no gas, and initially no electricity. His wife Deirdre supporting the family as an art teacher while raising their three children. Ten lawsuits defending his patents from incumbents trying to slow him down and partners trying to copy it.
When a new idea fixes an old problem, the first reaction is often ‘if there were a better way, someone else would have already done it.’ It’s not because the new idea doesn’t work, it’s because the old idea works too well for everyone but the customer.
It wasn’t about the money for James. He was frustrated that the industry had normalized a flaw that had existed for 100 years.
He knew he could solve it. Once he did, he fell “in love with the Dual Cyclone”.
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