Best of Design Matters: James Dyson

0:00This episode of Design Matters originally appeared in June of 2025. I mean, I'm a designer and an engineer. I'm not a money man or a manufacturer. I was making a product I loved. Strange to love vacuum cleaners, but I did and still do.

0:21From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman.

0:28on design matters debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do how they got to be who they are and what they're thinking about and working on on this episode james dyson talks about his life and some of the groundbreaking products he's designed i wasn't aware that what i was doing was anything unusual or different i was just doing it my way

0:57This episode is sponsored by Toyota. There's a difference between having options and having the right options. When something is designed well, it doesn't just give you more choices. It gives you choices that actually make sense for how you live. That's the thinking behind Toyota's new all-electric lineup. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, they've built a family of vehicles. the versatile BZ, the adventurous BZ Woodland, and the expressive CHR, each one meeting people where they are. Because independence isn't about doing everything differently. It's about doing things in a way that feels natural to you.

1:31Learn more at toyota.com, the new all-electric family. Toyota, let's go places. This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. This episode is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets.

2:15The objects we interact with most are often the ones we notice least. The Kohler Smart Toilet challenges that assumption. What if the most overlooked space in your home could become the most considered? Their Vale Smart Toilet is a sculptural silhouette that isn't just intentional. It's a philosophy that design changes everything. The Kohler Veil Smart Toilet is sleek, with a rounded shape that's more like architecture than just plumbing, and it goes beyond looks. The touchscreen controls and customizable cleansing features offer a level of comfort and cleanliness that exceed expectations. It's all about elevating those ordinary daily rituals into something extraordinary through thoughtful design.

3:03Kohler has been pushing these boundaries for over 150 years, mastering that balance of stunning form and high-performance function. That's a long time to get it right, and it shows in every detail. Experience the difference of Kohler smart toilets. Find out more at Kohler.com. My guest today is someone who has not only changed the way we clean our homes, but how we think about failure, invention, and even the air we breathe. Sir James Dyson is a British inventor, designer, entrepreneur, educator, and philanthropist. First known for inventing the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner, James Dyson has built a global company that has reinvented how humans engage in and with technology.

3:55Sir James Dyson, welcome to Design Matters. Good morning. You have built a world-changing company on the belief that the best ideas come from frustration, failure, and relentless tinkering. You've transformed not just how we clean our homes, but how we think about design, engineering, and the very nature of invention. Sir James, my first question is this. What has mud taught you? Mud. Mud. Mud. Mud. Mud. Well, not a lot. I mean, I come across mud on my farms. Yes. I understand that when you walk, you get a lot of ideas and mud has helped inspire you with new thoughts about how things are made.

4:45We don't have to answer that question. It just came up a lot in a lot of my research. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I used to slide around on it when I was a child in the creeks of Norfolk. And I guess it gets trodden into carpets and we have to clear it up, especially when it's dry. And we now clean it off hard floors with our hard floor washing machine, which I can just see behind me. And it turns into dust. And we have to deal with dust. I just thought it would be fun to talk about because it came up a few times in my research. Oh, really? You grew up in Norfolk, a home where your family grew their own vegetables and collected eggs from your hens.

5:25There was no television, not enough heating, no new toys, and few, if any, consumer goods. Yet I read that your first memory is of being lowered into a swimming pool by your father, who was teaching you how to swim. What do you think it is about that experience that prompted such a visceral memory? Well, I was a very skinny little boy, and it was being done while the swimming pool was filling up. So it was filling up full of freezing water. Remember, this is Norfolk, and there's nothing between me in Norfolk and the Arctic in one direction and Siberia in the other. So it was a pretty chilling experience.

6:05I remember that far more than the difficulties of learning to swim. I think I learned to swim very quickly just to get out of the water. Your dad has been described as a cheerful polymath who was also a keen photographer. He coached the rugby and hockey teams at your boarding school. He was also a teacher there of classics. And you and your older brother attended the school as well. And while at school you studied bassoon, you were part of the combined cadet force and acted in the school plays and design the sets. You were also an athlete and began long-distance running. What first drew you to running?

6:49As a young child, I never walked. I always ran everywhere because I think I was in a hurry. I didn't see any point in walking. It seemed to be a waste of time. And I then discovered I rather enjoyed it. I don't enjoy it now. I do it now. At the age of 78, I'm still running, but I don't enjoy it now. But in those days, it wasn't such hard work. It wasn't so painful. It seemed much more natural. I also liked it because I could get out into the countryside on my own across the heath land and across the sand dunes along the beaches. So it was a wonderful way to experience and feel the countryside.

7:28Do you think that the stamina required for long distance running impacted how you approach the task of long-term invention? Completely. That I experienced during my youth that you, in order to be good at running, you have to run a lot and do a lot of weightlifting and other things. And you must never give up. And I think the thing I learned most from it, peculiarly, is running the mile. Why is that? Well, I was a long distance runner and the mile was one of the, it was the longest distance we were allowed to run in those days. I think they thought running any further was bad for you. and what i learned was that at the end of the third lap when the finish isn't quite in sight you're feeling the most tired and the most down if you like and i realized that was the time to accelerate because success is just around the corner and people often give up at the point they're about to be successful when everything's against you everything you've tried doesn't work you're feeling exhausted, it seems pointless.

8:30That's the point to double down and really break through that last bit. That's where everybody else gives up. Why do you think that is? Just because of how difficult it feels at the time? Yes. Well, it does feel difficult. And it feels that you're not being successful, that you haven't achieved what you set out to achieve, and you're a bit of a failure. And there doesn't seem to be a solution to the problem. I mean, it's the same in running, same in developing new technology. And that's the very point where you mustn't stop. Your father lost his battle to cancer when he was only 40 years old. You were nine.

9:07You said this about his passing. Perhaps I had to learn quickly to make decisions for myself to be self-reliant and be willing to take risks. Little could be worse than my father dying when he did. Yet you also wrote that you had to respond with a stiff upper lip. Why is that? Well, this was very shortly after the war. And a lot of people had died in the war. And in Britain, there had always been up to that point, the stiff upper lip of the upper classes. And, you know, you took disaster in your stride. You went away to boarding school, away from your parents. who were often maltreated by teachers.

9:51I don't mean physically necessarily, but mentally. And you had to learn to survive that system. So death at that time was not considered the awful disaster that it is now. I mean, of course it was in a way, but nothing like how it is now. But I did feel different because I only had a mother, whereas everybody else at school had two parents, for another reason, actually, which was that divorces were far less frequent then. So everybody else seemed to have two parents and I only had one. So that made me feel different. I didn't feel sorry for myself, but it made me feel different. How do you think that impacted how you ultimately have crafted the arc of your life?

10:35Oh, hugely, because as you said, I had to rely on myself. I thought I had to rely on myself, although I had a very competent mother, a loving mother. I somehow felt alone and I had to make my own decisions and find my own way in life. You know, I didn't have an awful lot to lose. So taking risks and living on the edge was something that came naturally to me. Before his death, your father had been a teacher of classics at Gresham's, a prestigious boarding school that you and your older brother also attended. And after he passed, the school's then headmaster, Logie Bruce Lockhart, allowed you to stay at the school despite not having the money to pay the tuition.

11:15And I believe Logie became a big influence on you while you were at school. Was he the first person to recommend you to consider furthering your education in product design? No, I think the school was very much against going into art, as they called it then. You were supposed to go into the foreign office or be a doctor or an accountant or something. So I think indeed, I was the first person from the school to go to a school of art and design when I left. Now, I don't know if this is true or not, but I did read that he was okay about you going to art school because he didn't think you had it academically in you to pursue anything else.

11:58Is that correct? Well, he's absolutely right. I mean, how did that make you feel at the time? Well, he was also, he was a polymath. I mean, he admitted as a headmaster at the time that academia wasn't everything. There were other things in life. I mean, he had been a very successful rugby player. He captained Scotland in rugby. He also was the first person to go into Belsen as an army captain, young army captain. So he had quite a broad view of life, that academia wasn't the only thing. I read that you thought since you sat on chairs, you could be a furniture designer and quite liked the idea of constructing something useful.

12:40Well, that sounds incredibly arrogant. You have to remember in the mid-60s, design wasn't the thing it is now. There weren't shops where you could buy design. There weren't design shops and the shops that existed were not interested in design. It was post-war anything will do kind of setup. so I didn't know about design and I the wonderful principal at my college said what are you going to do next because I did painting and drawing for a year and he said there's this thing called design I think you might be quite good at design and I said what's design I mean I was it was that basic and he reeled off a few types of design and furniture was the only one I recognized so That's what I chose to study.

13:27I actually switched to architecture while I was doing it. Do you remember when you first began to think about the world, not just as it is, but how it could be redesigned? Well, I was really lucky because the mid-60s were a time of big cultural change, big technology change. Concorde was about to come out. The mini car had been invented. There were lots of interesting things going on. And I got interested in that, which was quite surprising for an artist turned architect. I discovered that engineering was actually very interesting. And it was the time of Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, and Buckminster Fuller in particular.

14:10And Buckminster Fuller had just done the U.S. exhibit at the Montreal Expo, which was this wonderful dome, you know, complete dome made of aluminium tubes. It was the most wonderfully inspiring exhibit. and I suddenly realized that architecture and products for that matter were really about their engineering not the style not the outward appearance of them and I realized that I wanted to do which is a bit odd because I was a designer and a would-be architect I wanted to do the engineering the technology as well as design it and most arrogantly also wanted to make it And I don't know what gave me that.

14:51Why do you think that's arrogance? Well, there I was at the Royal College of Art in London, a school of art and design, imagining I could be a manufacturer and sell my products to the world. I mean, that is a huge form of arrogance. You attended structural engineering classes with Anthony Hunt, the designer of London's Waterloo Station. What did he teach you about the relationship between design and engineering and integrity? Well, we had blackboards in those days and he used to draw structural problems on the blackboard. And I found it riveting, you know, why a bridge stayed up and why bridges fell down, how cable structures worked.

15:31The structure is at the heart of everything and engineering is at the heart of everything. And that's where you start. That's what it taught me. Yeah, my father-in-law is an engineer and he's astounded at how little design really appreciates in engineering and what it really takes to bring an idea to life. Well, yes. I mean, Tony drew and was a normal human being. And I didn't realize that engineers were like that. I thought they were very boring people in white coats. And suddenly I realized how wrong I'd been. and society then did divide people into the backroom boys with the white coats and the designers out front with the pink shirts and the felt-tip pens i mean it's a stale analogy but that's the world was divided like that and i didn't think that was right how did your experience of studying art and design affect the way you eventually approached engineering well i the the My structural engineer's tutor, who introduced me to Buckminster Fuller, through that I realised that you start with how the product works, the new technology it uses, and why it's therefore a better product, or a better building for that matter.

16:42and that the design should evolve from how the product works, what it's used for, how you use it, not the sort of Harvey Earl skin that the Barkinger department uses to help sell the product in a contemporary style. So I was sort of revolted by that and wanted to know what the product's going to look like as you develop the engineering because of the way it works. Do you find that most people find that design and engineering are complementary or intention? Well, strange enough, shortly after I left college, I went back as an examiner and then as a governor. We started in the Royal College with probably the first engineering design course in the world, melding design and engineering.

17:38and that started a trend and I think most colleges now teach engineering with design. Thank goodness. Yes. Your first commercial invention was the ball barrow, a wheelbarrow with a ball instead of a wheel. Where did that inspiration come from and what did that experience teach you about innovation and resistance? hmm well that my my first product was actually a high-speed landing craft which i did for a public company um i did that straight from that was a sea vessel is that correct yeah yes it was a high-speed landing craft yes um and i did that actually while i was still at university at the royal college of art and then went to set up the company to manufacture and sell it around the world and i I then wanted to do my own product for humans.

18:29I mean, as opposed to armies and construction companies and oil companies, which was what my landing craft was used for. So I wanted to do something for the home. And I had been doing up a house, an old house in the Cotswolds. And the wheelbarrow kept getting stuck in the mud. It had a narrow wheel. And that's mud. Mud again. Mud. Yeah, it's all back to mud. And the legs, the tubular legs, would get sunk in and the thing would tip over and whatever you put in it fell out. So just while I was lugging this thing around, I started to redesign it in my head. The first obvious thing was to have a balloon fat tire, not this narrow tire that they have.

19:09And then it started from there. Frustration. Frustration. Envisioning something better. Yes, yes. wanting to do something better. While spray painting the ball barrow, you initially used a standard fan to keep removing the flying paint particles, but it kept clogging and stopping the production line. And you discovered that cyclone separators were the only thing that could do the job. And that discovery led to your reinvention of the entire vacuum cleaner category. And in the years leading up to its public introduction, you famously made 5 ,127 prototypes of the vacuum over five years before arriving at one that worked and that number has become part of the Dyson mythology.

20:03Was there ever a time in the journey to 5 ,127 that you wanted to give up? Well of course it's like running the mile again so I'm back to that yeah I mean I don't know when I got to the four thousandth prototype I wonder is this ever going to end did any specific prototype ever just break you well none of them worked but I was understanding more and more and certainly finding out what didn't work and one of the reasons I built so many prototypes and one of the reasons we still do today is that you can only make one change at a time so a lot of people want to be brilliant and leap to the final answer but you you start and you make one change at a time and you wait to see what difference that change makes and sometimes it makes it better and sometimes it makes it worse and then you wonder why and that tells you what to do for the next prototype and the next prototype and so on so you're making slow progress you're learning and you're taking often one step back one step forward and so on so many of the days are wasted but you rule things out so it's like a control yes and you're you're narrowing the field and you're getting close to the solution and often i mean a particular problem i had was that um well first of all i was told by the highest authority in britain on cyclones that you can never make a cyclone that will clear cigarette smoke.

21:36You can only collect sand in it, you know, gritty sand, not cigarette smoke. So part of my research was proving him wrong about that. I rather like proving people wrong, excaplates wrong. It's very satisfying. And then the other problem was, which is actually a far greater problem in the end, was that a cyclone is for clearing very fine particles. But vacuum cleaners pick up lots of nasty things like scissors and coins and hair in particular, fluff and hair. And cyclones don't like fluff and hair. Because they're too big. It goes straight through it because it's only for clearing fine dust. So I had to solve that problem.

22:18And that was probably the most difficult one. And that's one where I most nearly gave up. You went into debt in this journey. You even had the house you lived in with your family on the line. What kept you going? Were you that sure that you could produce something that would ultimately become what it became? No, I wasn't sure at all. And I was beginning to doubt myself more and more as I couldn't find a solution. But I was in debt and I had to carry on. And your wife, my wife is hugely supportive. Yeah. She's an artist and she understands what a project is. But nevertheless, it's a big thing to put the house, especially when you've got three young children and a dog.

23:03Was there an emotional difference between the first failure and the 5 ,000th? The 5 ,127th. Well, not really, because by 5 ,127, you're on the verge of success, whereas 5 ,000, and you're still not sure how many more iterations you will need to be successful or if you'll be successful. Does it get easier? Does resilience get easier with repetition? I don't think so. No. I mean, it's interesting because you've done these experiments, you've failed and you had some successes. And it's a fascinating time. Actually, it may not sound it from outside, but when you're doing it, when you're making these discoveries yourself, uh it's it's a very absorbing i mean i was working at home at the time and uh i used to come in for lunch covered with dust and sit down and i was happy actually heavily in debt and worried deeply worried of course but at the same time professionally at least very happy does failure do you are you afraid of failure well yes i mean if it was a fade of failure but um it's a necessary part of experimenting and ultimately succeeding.

24:21And I'm always very disappointed that school wants you to get the answer, or academia wants you to get the answer right, you know, immediately. Well, I think we're living in a world now where there's this almost requirement for immediate gratification, immediate success. People that are successful early in their lives are lauded, and there seems to be a lack of real patience and rigor in the way most people approach the world these days? Well, I mean, almost any job you do, you don't know the answer. You have to work it out. But that's not what school teaches you. School teaches you to learn something, remember it, and then spout it when asked.

25:05It doesn't teach you about failure. I mean, I always think that school should mark people not on the number of right answers they give, but the number of wrong answers, which they then go away and experiment and correct for themselves and find out for themselves viscerally. Because that's what life's about. And I've looked at the people I was at school with who were very keen on getting top marks and coming top and all that kind of thing. And they haven't always had very interesting lives afterwards. Whereas the failures, a lot of the academic failures have had a much more interesting and exciting life.

25:40As a teacher, I am going to borrow that phrase and encourage my students to ask as many questions as they can that might be giving them the wrong answers to get to the right one. And also work things out for themselves. Get to the answer by failing. You know, there's no, well, there is a hurry to get the right answer, but getting the wrong answer and then understanding why they failed and working out the right answer is what life is about. You founded Dyson Limited in 1991 and launched the DC01 in 1993. What were the early days of Dyson Limited like? Very scary. I didn't have any money for a start.

26:26And it was interesting. A lot of people put money into startups. So startups are quite well funded. I didn't have any money. So I had to make do without money. I couldn't advertise or do any PR or anything. It's a very good process to go through so that you work out how to do things the hard way without just spending money. So, for example, the first retailer who was, because they all rejected me at the beginning because I wasn't a brand. You can't sell an electrical product. Once you get to that 5 ,127 prototype that works, then you have everybody saying, no, I don't want this. They absolutely said that.

27:09I got one person who was vaguely interested, an electrical retailer. And he said, well, you know, I've taken it home and everything you say about it is true. But why would anyone buy a Dyson in a shop? They're going to buy a brand name, wouldn't buy you. What about doing some advertising? I said, I haven't got any money. He said, well, I can't take you then. And then I said, well, supposing you, every thousand machines you order, I'll spend 10 ,000 pounds or whatever it was on television advertising. And we did a deal on that basis. And that really got me going. And you were featured in the ads?

27:47No, not originally. No, I did that later. Okay. One of the things that I... It wasn't my idea, by the way. Oh, I know. I know. I thought it's a very embarrassing thing to do. I think they're charming. Absolutely charming. One of the things that I was so fascinated by... My family was horrified when they saw what I was doing. Why? Because, I don't know, I think they thought it was some terrible form of salesmanship. In Britain, we're quite snobby about selling. It's not a profession that's well respected at all. It's very different in the United States, quite correctly. It's a wonderful thing to do, actually, a very exciting job.

28:27It is a very exciting job. In 1995, I joined a firm that had originated in the UK, Sterling Brands. and I came in as their salesperson, their business development person. And I was working with an entire team of British men. And I think they hated me at first because I was so overtly. I'm sure they didn't. I'm sure. Oh, because you were keen on selling. I was keen. I was like this weird American woman that was out there selling and they were horrified. Well, I hope you showed them away. I did, actually. That was very gratifying. one of the biggest resistances to the acceptance of your vacuum cleaner by the industry was the fact that it didn't have a bag even though that was one of the great great differentiators because people were concerned that it would change the vacuum cleaner bag industry and therefore the people that were making the bags wouldn't be making money anymore and that just blew my mind that well it was two things actually one is that the vacuum cleaner manufacturers would have no further sales like the razor blade you know and the shots were worried but they too would have no further sales of bags and they liked selling bags because people had to come into the shop to buy them so it brought them into the shop which which was a good idea so yes there was a no bag resistance and the in fact the term bagless wasn't coined by me it was coined by my competitors who wanted to make it sound bad.

30:00So bagless was a derogatory term. I can't even begin to tell you how many times over the decades prior to your vacuum cleaner coming out, I would cease to be able to use my vacuum cleaner because I had issues getting the bags. And so it just sat in the closet, dormant, while dirt piled up on the carpet. This is a horrifying story. It is. Well, actually, that's how I started, because the vacuum cleaner wasn't working. Right. And I thought, oh, the bag must be full. But I couldn't find a spare one. So I went and tipped the contents out into a garbage can and gaffer taped it, you know, scotch tape it, the end, back up again.

30:41I tried to do that. Put it back in the machine, and still it wasn't picking things up. So I thought, well, that's odd. The vacuum bag is empty. Why isn't it? So I took my scotch tape off and looked inside the bag and there was a lining of fine dust all the way around the inside of the bag and then the penny dropped what's happening here is that the air is supposed to go through the bag and it's being clogged by fine dust particles right so it's a con the bag wasn't full the bag was clogged we need a better system at what point did you realize that you weren't just making vacuums that you were creating an entirely new category and a new design language?

31:25Well, I don't think it was a point where I thought that. I mean, I'm a designer and an engineer. I'm not a money man or a manufacturer. I was making a product I loved. Strange to love vacuum cleaners, but I did and still do. And that's what I was doing. So I wasn't aware that what I was doing was anything unusual or different. I was just doing it my way.

31:53This episode is sponsored by Toyota. There's something powerful about momentum, that feeling when things are moving forward, when you're not stuck, you're not waiting, you're just going. That's true in life, and it's true in how we move through the world. Toyota's new all-electric vehicles are built to support that kind of momentum, whether it's the quick acceleration of the CHR, the versatility of the BZ, or the capability of the BZ Woodland. And with access to a growing network of chargers, including Tesla superchargers, it's designed to keep you moving, not slowing you down. Because capability isn't just about power.

32:26It's about removing friction. Learn more at Toyota.com, the new all-electric family. Toyota, let's go places. Hey, Yetis. This is Nick and Jack from the Best One Yet podcast. Now, the last company we worked at, they used Paylocity and everything just worked. It wasn't until launching our own media business, this show, that we realized how rare that is. Because Paylocity is one delicious burrito of operational needs. They roll up HR, finance, and IT seamlessly into one delicious bite. When everything wraps together like that all at once, your workforce, your tech stack, your business, you don't need more tools.

33:00You don't even need cilantro. You need one solution. And that is why Paylocity built a single platform to connect HR, finance, and IT with AI-driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power of what's next. Or as we call it, a delicious operational burrito. Yes, we do. Experience a one place for all your HCM needs, besties. So start now at paylocity.com slash one. Paylocity.com slash O-N-E. This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping.

33:37Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Investing with Schwab is like spending a Saturday at a great farmer's market. You can fill your reusable tote with a bit of everything. Maybe you go for some free-range, self-directed investing. Or perhaps you pick up a few farm-fresh trades while you peruse. You can even get help from a dedicated advisor.

34:11That's full-service wealth management. Mix, match, and change your mind whenever you want. Because at Schwab, you can invest your way. No matter your goals or appetite for investing, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place. Visit schwab.com to learn more. You've said that design is not about making things look pretty. It's about solving problems. Yet I'm sitting in your studio in Soho, New York City, surrounded by the most beautiful products in your categories that you sell in existence. So talk about, if you can, the connection between your visual aesthetic and your innovation that's inherent in every product that you've brought to market.

34:59it? I think it goes back to the time I was at the Royal College of Art and Design. That's where I come from. And then wanting to understand engineering and designing engineering products. I mean, but Mr. Fuller led me to it. But being asked to design a high speed landing craft, which I'd never, I'd hardly been on a boat before, let alone design one. And the boat had to work. I mean, it had to float, it had to be unsinkable, and it had to go fast, and it had to land on beaches and all that sort of thing. So it's how it performed, its performance, how you use it, what it's like to use, how it looks, certainly.

35:40Does it look purposeful? Most people thought it didn't look like a boat, and it didn't look like a conventional boat. It was its own version of a boat, but it explained its use when you looked at it. I didn't see the difference between engineering and design. For me, they were one thing. And I hate the idea that an engineer designed and developed technology and then someone comes along and makes it look good. I just don't like that approach. Has a need for a specific aesthetic in your work ever needed to be sacrificed because of an engineering need? Oh, yes. often you can't do what you want to do visually because of an engineering issue.

36:25But that's fine. You know, you've got to work with it with those constraints. In my research, I came upon numerous instances where you were dismissive of market research. And I read one interview where you stated most focus groups are wrong. Do you still believe that? And if so, why? Well, let's put it this way. They're dodgy. They can tell you some things, but they really can't give you the answers and i always say that proof of that is that politicians rely on them so if you want an example of why they don't work but and i'm i'll give you a very simple a good example um when we were developing cyclonic action for a vacuum cleaner we made all parts see-through so you could see what was going on and you could see the dirt piling up in the collection bin.

37:17And we thought that was rather nice. There was something very pleasing about it. Really satisfying about this. It's evidence. So I made the early prototypes with clear bins. And when we showed them to retailers, they said, you can't sell that thing. People don't want to see the dirt. It's disgusting. But we decided to persevere because we thought it was right. We did some market research and the retailers were absolutely right. People didn't want to see the dirt and our competitors. Or they said they didn't, right? I think they didn't want to see it. So what kept you? It's disgusting. Well, it is disgusting.

37:54It's sort of horrifying to see what humans produce. Well, yes, and dogs and the world. But we were just convinced that it was interesting and satisfying because when you push around a vacuum cleaner, a bag vacuum cleaner, you don't know what you're doing. I mean, you're pushing it around, it's making a screaming noise and you hope you're cleaning. Maybe you could see some of the dirt coming off the surface. We don't know deep down what's going on. So we ignored it. We ignored the retailers. And our competitors laughed when they saw it in the store. But it was something that people really liked because at last they got, pleasure is the wrong word, but they got some satisfaction for their half an hour, an hour they spent vacuuming their home because they had collected that dirt out of the house.

38:40You made 5 ,127 prototypes before you launched your vacuum cleaner. There are a couple of products that you've designed that haven't been as successful in the market or you chose not to continue selling them. The electric vehicle and your washing machine. Although it does seem like your washing machine really, there's a moment in time where it could be relaunched, at least from everything I've read about how great it is. Talk about the decisions to not bring something to market or to remove something from the market. We should have carried on with the washing machine. At the time, it was very expensive to make, probably three times the cost of a normal washing machine.

39:27And we didn't charge enough for it. and so it was losing money and we should have persevered because actually it was selling quite well and people who bought it really liked it but we weren't very big in those days and losing money is not something you want to do as a private business yes now the car was a very different matter we started developing that in in 2014 when tesla was the only other person doing electric cars i looked at the what the industry was predicting and it said that two percent of cars by 2030 would be electric and i thought that was wrong and we were developing electric motors still developing electric motors we're developing battery technology and we're about cleaning air and moving air and chilling air and so on so um i thought that we were in quite a good position to do an electric car but every manufacturer had started making electric cars but losing a lot of money on them which they were prepared to do now i we couldn't compete in that environment because we had to make money out of our car we couldn't offset our losses on the electric car by continuing to make gas guzzlers at the other end so it was an entirely a commercial decision You know, a car business is a big business.

40:46You need a lot of money and a lot of capital. And we're a private business, a relatively small private business. You've been a private company since 1991. You are the sole owner. Talk about the decision to keep it private. Well, that wasn't difficult. I mean, I own all the shares because no one would back it. I did try to get people to back it, but no one would back it. They said you're an engineer and we're not backing engineers. We want commercial people. So by default, I own 100 % of the shares. And I don't really want to sell any shares to anybody. I want it to remain a family business, a private family business, whose sole interest is in producing new technology and developing new products and not be constrained by short-termism and having to make an immediate profit.

41:39it. The airblade hand dryer, the bladeless air multiplier fan, the supersonic hairdryer. These aren't just technological household gadgets. They're game changers. But innovation is really expensive. What is your philosophy on risk and return, especially when the outcome is uncertain and you are the person that's funding everything? Of course, we have to look at things commercially, but you have to take risks and you don't know and when we introduced the hand dryer a hair dryer well and from that time the hand dryer we didn't know we'd sell any you never know how many are going to sell so everything is a huge risk as i said i think from the early age i didn't mind living on the edge you know i'd lost everything and lost my father not my mother loving mother but I wasn't afraid of losing things.

42:34In 2016, you founded the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology. It is now a university and offers degrees while students work on real products. You also created the James Dyson Foundation, which supports design education. What do you think is missing from how we teach engineering and creativity to young people today? Well, we have a thing called the James Dyson Award, which is now in 35 countries, I think, where we ask people to solve a problem. Young people is people at university. And one of the interesting things is that in the beginning, 20 years ago, they designed wind surfers and sort of sporting things.

43:17But now they've fallen into two categories only one is things that improve the health particularly an ability of old people or environmental projects improve the environment and there are some wonderful wonderful examples of both of those for example there's a philippine student who discovered there's a lot of rotting fruit happens in the philippines because of hurricanes and so on and he discovered that a mixture of certain rotting fruit, if you formed a paste from it and put it over a window as a sort of film, a green film, it created electricity from light, not sunshine, but light. And he showed me a pane of glass, like a television screen, and he was charging his iPad from it.

44:05So that was utterly brilliant. And then a much simpler example was a woman in Ireland, who a student in ireland whose mother had had cancer and lost her hair and uh she designed there weren't enough um freezing things in the hospital to to keep your freeze your head so she designed a portable one we put on something that looked like quite a stylish hat actually with some tubes that went down to a cooling device in a handbag that you hang on your shoulder so that you could cool your head if you had cancer you cool your head anywhere actually in the car traveling or at home. And so the thing I find interesting about this is it's wonderful that young people are thinking of those things and coming up with those solutions rather than talking about problems, they're actually solving them.

45:00So that's why I have huge faith in young people. There seems to be a big difference between coming up with an idea where you see a problem. So hair falls out when you undertake chemotherapy. But the paste on the window? Like, how does something like that manifest in somebody's mind? I think I'm just going to take the paste from these decaying fruit, smear it on a window and see what happens. Yeah. He was rather an interesting person, actually, because he had entered our award two years earlier and not won it. So he carried on. He kept trying and trying again, experimenting. inventing. And then he won our global award.

45:42So, I mean, every year, I'm just amazed at how people take intractical problems and solve them for the good of the world. They're not skateboards or, you know, something fancy. They're really trying to solve serious problems. So, James, I have one last question for you. If there was something you could invent tomorrow that would be instantly successful, anything at all, what would that be? Well, you can't think of things like that, so I'm not going to give an answer to that. Oh, okay, good. Because you don't know something's going to be successful until you do it. Okay. And it isn't always successful.

46:20Sometimes it's not. And I'm not sure, in a way, you shouldn't think of life in those terms. Because you should do what you want to do. It's something you have a passion for. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But success, or financial success, isn't the only measure of success. What is the most important aspect of success to you? Solving a problem and making something out of it. And it can be a big thing. It can be a small thing. It doesn't matter. Well, maybe it does matter to some people. But either way, you've achieved something. You've changed in a very small way the world. It's your achievement.

47:03And that's what you were there to do, make a difference. Sir James Dyson, thank you so much for making so much work that matters. And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters. I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you very much. Thank you. To learn more about the great work of Sir Dyson, you can go to Dyson.com or JamesDysonFoundation.com. This is the 20th year we've been podcasting Design Matters. And I'd like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference. We can make a difference. Or we can do both. I'm Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

47:39Design Matters is produced for the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest-running branding program in the world. The Editor-in-Chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.

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