The bagless vacuum cleaner that bears his name brought him fame and made him a billionaire, but this was neither James Dyson’s first attempt nor his final invention.

 

A brilliant idea

There is a myth about inventors. They simply need to have a good idea to make their fortune. In reality, these ideas don’t exist.” We could feel rather sceptical about such a statement if it wasn’t for the fact that it was made by James Dyson, one of the most successful inventors in the world. His fortune is estimated at more than one billion pounds and rising. According to him, all that lies behind a problem that needs to be resolved: “You start off building prototypes. Hundreds of them. Sometimes even thousands. Often, by the time, the final solution no longer bears any relation to the original.” Most inventors fail not because of a lack of the talent or imagination, but because the starting point is wrong. “When someone shows you something you don’t understand, never ask them what it’s for. The moral of the story? Keep failing! It’s the most effective method”.

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“The more original your idea is, the more resistance it will encounter.”

James Dyson

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First invention

Trained at the Byam Shaw art school in London, Dyson didn’t just want to paint, but wanted to invent. He was soon to use architecture at the Royal College of Art, but instead of designing houses or bridges he came up with the Ballbarrow – a wheelbarrow with a ball instead of a wheel, for better balance on uneven ground. It was a clever idea, and although it was a commercial success, Dyson was dismissed from the company. The growing sales volumes required large-scale production which the inventor could not supply. His partners provided a cash injection in return for shares. Now a minority shareholder, James Dyson took part, against his will, in the sale of his invention. There was nothing he could do, except think up a new invention. One appeared in the next. In 1978, Dyson noticed that the air filter in a spray-finishing room became blocked because it was being blocked by powder particles. He decided to design a vacuum cleaner based on the same principle – a centrifugal force to filter out the particles from the air by exerting a centrifugal force to remove the grime: a great advantage to existing bagless systems. Why wouldn’t the same principle apply to a vacuum cleaner? Dyson set to work: 5 years, and 5,127 prototypes later, the bagless vacuum cleaner appeared.

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The $2,000 vacuum cleaner

The multinationals weren’t interested in Dyson’s invention. Their sales of vacuum cleaner bags generated hundreds of millions of pounds. In Japan, however, his invention was welcomed with great enthusiasm: he was awarded first prize at the International Design Fair in Japan. The Japanese design market immediately started selling units at a unit price of £2000. In 1993, a new step in the inventor’s career: he created his own company and opened a research centre in Wiltshire. The business quickly flourished. In 1995, Dyson became the market leader in the United Kingdom in the space of 18 months. His successor, the DC02 took the design of this household item to a new level, playing with the effects of transparency and colours. An approach shared with another success story: Apple.

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“I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.”

James Dyson

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​The patent nightmare

Unlike a singer who owns the songs he writes, an inventor must pay large sums of money to renew his patents every year. Entrepreneurs know that the best form of protection is success, which sometimes leads to the temptation to miss out on solid and costly protection. James Dyson had no income during the development years. He almost went bankrupt, but his experience with “the Ballbarrow” saved the day: he filed a patent and when Hoover tried to copy his invention in 1999, it took the inventor 18 months to record a victory against the multinational for infringement.