This interview was edited to fit a single page in the magazine. You can read the complete interview here. James Dyson famously went through 5,127 prototypes of his Dual Cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner before settling on the model that would make him a billionaire. His eponymous company now also makes bladeless fans and energy-efficient hand dryers, and operates in 49 countries. Dyson stepped down as chairman this year but remains the sole owner and chief engineer. by Alison Beard HBR: How do you describe your profession? James Dyson: I’m sometimes called an inventor. But actually there’s no such thing. You’re an engineer or scientist who develops technology to create something new and better. I’m also keen on design; I started as a designer. I see them all as one, joined-up profession. You’ve said that your father’s death, in 1956, when you were nine, made you who you are today. How so? Not having a father, particularly at that time, was very unusual. I felt different. I was on my own. I can’t quite explain it, but I think subconsciously I felt a need to prove myself. Something like 80% of British prime ministers since Walpole lost a parent before the age of 10. So there’s something in it. I’m certainly quite driven. What did your first boss, Jeremy Fry, teach you? When I went to work for him, I’d never designed a product. I’d never sold anything. And he put me in charge of a company manufacturing a high-speed landing craft. So he taught me that someone doesn’t have to grow into a job. If you allow them to make mistakes, they’ll learn extremely quickly. He also taught me to mistrust experience. He was far happier to have people working around him who had freshness and an unsullied approach. When big manufacturers rejected the Cyclone, why did you press on and produce it yourself? I just felt that if I gave it up and did something sensible, I’d always regret it. As a user of vacuum cleaners, it was what I wanted. If the bags and loss of suction really annoyed me, surely they would annoy other people. You’ve launched a few related products, such as fans. Would you like to try more new things? Oh, no. I would have been quite happy to solve all the problems with vacuum cleaners for the rest of my life. Continuing to improve something—doing a better invention—is a much harder intellectual process than flitting from one thing to another. I’ve heard all Dyson employees have to assemble a vacuum cleaner on their first day of work. They might be nonexecutive directors, who are knights of the realm, but they still have to. It gives them confidence in the technology. They know what’s inside. And they keep the ones they build. It’s to emphasize that what we do is make products that people use. As an adviser to the British Conservative Party, you’re advocating new policies to boost innovation in the UK. How does education factor into that? If you look at schoolchildren doing a subject we have called design and technology, from age 10 to 14, they love it and they’re brilliant at it. But somehow that gets drilled out of them. And, really, the government is responsible. Britain produces far fewer engineers than the Philippines, Mexico, or Iran, not to mention India and China. So we’re not setting ourselves up very well for the future. And children are missing out on something they could have enjoyed. Exeter did a study that showed engineers are the happiest of all professions. It’s enormously absorbing.
