Dyson Founder: Why not trust "user surveys"?

James Dyson shares three key magic bullets to Dyson's victory.

Author | James Dyson

Source | Invention: James Dyson's Journey to Creation

1

How to achieve the goal with scientific methods?

We really should learn from our mistakes, but we should also be free to make them.

A very important principle I've learned is to change one thing at a time and see what makes a difference. When I started making a prototype cyclone separation vacuum cleaner, I found two obviously difficult problems to solve.

First, the current state of technology is clear and confirmed by the literature: cyclone separation vacuum cleaners can only suck up dust particles of a diameter size of 20 microns, while common household dust is very fine, usually 0.5 microns in diameter or less, similar in size to cigarette smoke.

Second, the traditional shape of the cyclone separator does not absorb or separate carpet fluff and human hair, but only mixes them in exhaust gases and spews them out of the exhaust port.

I buried myself in the world of developing and designing vacuum cleaner prototypes. It's part of the Dyson brand story where I made 5127 prototypes and eventually found a model that could be used to produce licensing.

Constantly testing and making changes one after another is extremely time-consuming, but it is necessary because I need to follow up and prove or refute each of my theories. No matter how frustrating, I refused to be knocked down by failure. The 5126 prototypes I discarded, the 5126 so-called failures, were all part of the discovery and improvement process. Because of them, I got the right results in the 5127th design.

Failure is very important. We really should learn from our mistakes, and we should be free to make them.

While working on a dual cyclone vacuum cleaner, I visited a scientist named R.G. Dorman. He is considered an authoritative expert in the field of cyclone separation and extraction, and told me that the existing process can reduce the minimum diameter of dust that can be separated by cyclone separators to 20 microns.

But I know that for household vacuum cleaners, that number is 0.3 microns. Of course, this was considered impossible, so I intended to implement it myself. I need to do that, and I also want to prove that the authority experts are wrong. I also didn't find any shortcuts, and had to go through empirical testing to find the answers myself, while at the same time taking the level of craftsmanship to new heights. Finally, after testing 5127 prototypes, we did what experts thought was impossible.

In fact, if you believe you can achieve something – whether as a distance runner or as the manufacturer of a new vacuum cleaner – then you have to put 100% of your creativity into this project. You have to believe that you will eventually reach the end. You need determination, patience and perseverance.

2

Why not trust "user surveys"?

An invention may be a brilliant idea, even if it doesn't fit into the current market or has nothing to do with it. A design may be considered ahead of its time, sometimes it is, but sometimes the judgment is absurd. The very successful Sony Walkman was abandoned when it was first introduced, and who thought they would want a recorder that couldn't record! Before the Volkswagen Beetle and later the Honda Accord crossed the Atlantic, it was thought that Americans only liked large cars.

Here's just the example of the Sony Walkman, another fascinating success story because at first, its design seemed to go against common sense. Launched on July 1, 1979, just in time for school and college holidays, this personal box player allowed people to listen to music through headphones and became hugely popular as soon as it was introduced. The petite silver-blue Walkman, which costs $150, isn't cheap.

Inside Sony, the Walkman was controversial due to the inability to record. But others think it's a brave invention, and no one has ever made a "tape recorder" that doesn't record before. Still, one of Sony's founders, Inoue Dai, hoped to sell 5,000 Walkmans a month, but sold 50,000 in the first two months. By the time production was discontinued in Japan in 2010, the Sony Walkman had sold more than 400 million units worldwide.

Sony launched the right product at the right time. This compact music player is suitable for jogging, those who want to study or relax at home, as well as when traveling without disturbing others and listening to their favorite music. Ino's cleverness was that he had his deputy, Norio Oga, design a stereo-only version based on the existing cassette recorder Sony Pressman.

Norio Ohga is a physicist and musician who trained in Munich with the famous music conductor Herbertvon Karajan. In 1978, Norio Ohga and his team produced the TC-45 using as many off-the-shelf components as possible, but at a price of $1,000, and Inobu auditioned the opera on his business flight, thinking it was too bulky. It's all back to the drawing board, redesigned.

The Walkman was born, equipped with lightweight foam headphones that had no other function than playback. The press scoffed at this, even thinking that the name "Walkman" was ridiculous. The Japanese media was wrong, and the market didn't know what it wanted was a small personal stereo. When people saw this eye-catching small device and heard the sound it made, they were immediately conquered. By the mid-1980s, the word "Walkman" had been included in the Oxford English Dictionary. The Walkman is a cultural phenomenon, and for Sony, it's not hard to make.

Just as some sharks must swim constantly in order to survive, innovative engineering-led manufacturers need to constantly innovate to stay competitive. The pursuit of new and better products is often the definition of what these companies define themselves. At Dyson, we never stand still.

In 25 years, we've gone from manufacturing revolutionary vacuum cleaners to developing advanced prototypes of electric vehicles. Inventions often spawn new ones, and for that we need to build companies to protect them. They may have highlight moments, in the words of the writer Roland Barthes, "things that fall from heaven," but the glory will always fade. We must continue to innovate, always innovate.

3

Innovation, always innovation

It's crucial to keep improving and never be satisfied with a product that's selling well.

I never intended to make Dyson a vacuum cleaner company. Cyclone separators are the first core technology we apply to our products, and this product happens to be a vacuum cleaner, and I have always considered this as our first step. Since then, we have been focused on pioneering core technologies and relying on these technologies to design better products in more and more areas, all the way to the city.

We are on the hard journey of pilgrims, not shortcuts to success. DC01 was a quick success, but as insatiable engineers, we couldn't wait to figure out how to make a better version. We are eager to apply cyclone separation technology to different products.

I've been thinking about developing my own super-fast motors for a while. In fact, Jeremy and I discussed it when we developed the first cyclone vacuum cleaner in the 1980s. Theoretically, the higher the speed, the higher the efficiency of the motor. Similarly, the higher the turbine speed, the greater the pressure output. With this combination, we can try to make smaller, lighter and more efficient motors.

At that time, we were in contact with an Italian manufacturer hoping to do something interesting together. They liked the idea of a high-speed motor, but didn't want to be the first to eat crabs, probably because the vacuum cleaner's motor was already fast compared to the others. Jet engines revv 15,000 rpm, Formula One engines rpm and regular vacuum cleaner motors at 30,000 rpm.

Why faster? At that time, although we were neither motor designers nor motor manufacturers, we wanted to make a breakthrough in the design of the motor and achieve a leap in performance: to increase its speed many times, lighter and smaller, brushless, longer service life, no emissions, more energy saving, and most importantly, controllable speed, power and energy consumption. If we can make this revolutionary motor, then consider it further, we can make lighter, smaller, more efficient vacuum cleaners, and perhaps other products.

It's too risky and costly. For us though, the adventure was worth it. Today, Dyson has developed the world's smallest high-speed motor, allowing us to reinvent the vacuum cleaner as a navigator and improve our products in entirely new areas. By 2020, we will manufacture 24 million motors per year on our own advanced production lines.

Conventional motors use brushes to brush mechanical contacts, switching the magnetic poles to different parts of the commutator, which makes positive and negative currents alternate and produces a magnetic field that pushes the motor to rotate. The mechanical system was too slow and cumbersome for the speed we wanted to achieve. We had to develop a new way to drive motors. The main driver chip on the board allows 6500 switchovers per second. This device does not wear out because it relies on digital exchange inside the chip, not any mechanical device, and has extraordinary speed. Because we use chips as the fundamental driving force, we named this new motor Dyson digital motor. We have designed AC motors and DC motors differently to make them work differently, constantly improving the design and output power, so that they are smaller and more powerful.

After a long incubation process, our digital motors are about to transform Dyson. Eventually, the Dyson DC35 DigitalSlim came out. It is a new cordless vacuum cleaner equipped with our high-speed Dyson digital motor. V2, V6 to V8, V10, our Dyson digital motors have greatly improved performance while reducing weight.

Dyson Airflow Multiplier Bladeless Fans do not require traditional fan blades to accelerate airflow, operate quietly and safely, and in subsequent iterations, its performance has improved dramatically.

I sat in a yellow cab in Manhattan and called Peter Gammak. I said, "It's so cold here, we have to make something that can heat up." "So we started working on the heating fan.

If you have a good idea for a new product, you design, manufacture, market and sell it so you can become an entrepreneur. The pace of innovation in manufacturing is extremely slow, and it may take 5 years to launch a new Dyson product, but one of the keys to Dyson's difference is to never let yourself stay on the honor, not even for a minute.

Every day is an adventure and a response to the unexpected. Even if something seems to come to a standstill, the company has to keep moving forward. In order to survive, companies must continue to evolve and innovate and get better and better. There is nothing more dangerous than satisfying the status quo.

This article is excerpted from "Invention: James Dyson's Creative Journey", by James Dyson, produced by Zhanlu Culture/China Textile Publishing House, April 2022

Copyright notice: The article comes from the public account "Zhanlu Culture". The information provided by this WeChat ID is for reference only and does not endorse its views. If you believe that this article is infringing or that the labeling is not true, please let us know.