Product Description

The inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner tells the story of his incredible struggle to design and launch a machine that worked better than all others.

When he brought his Dual Cyclone vacuum to market, manufacturers of traditional vacuums responded first with ridicule, then lawsuits, and finally with imitations. By 1997 Dyson's company was generating annual revenue of over £100 million per year in the United Kingdom, and sales of more than one billion dollars worldwide.

Dyson's freewheeling account of his struggles, failures and successes is interspersed with his unorthodox ideas on business, and his hard-won insights on how to turn an inspired idea into a household name. Against the Odds will inspire engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs and appeal to students around the world.

First published in the UK, this updated edition includes the latest on Dyson's legal and business battles to establish the Dual Cyclone vacuum worldwide, and includes the story of his most recent innovation, the 2-drum Dyson Contrarotator™ Washing Machine, and his launch into the US.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #467775 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

About the Author
James Dyson is an engineer and the founder of Dyson. He invented the Dual Cyclone, England's biggest selling vacuum cleaner. He is also a board member of the Design Council. He lives in Wiltshire, England.

Customer Reviews

An entrepreneur's struggle and testimonial
This is a great story of a stubborn, possibly cantankerous, designer turned manufacturing entreprenur. It was a real page-turner and I couldn't put it down.

This Brit took on the vacuum sweeper industry worldwide and now is introducing washing machines that may be technologically superior -- just like his sweepers. He has invented and introduced several products to the world.

Here's what you can get from this book:

1) A humorous story of entrepreneurial struggle and then success,
2) Dyson's rules for product design,
3) Dyson's rules for start-ups for manufacturing companies,
4) Some great words to improve your vocabulary (he's British remember),
5) Lessons in patents and the lengths to which you will have to defend them,
6) How entrenched product manufacturers will buy companies to squelch a superior technology to keep it off the market,
7) How your wayward son who goes off to study art may actually end up richer than you.
8) How to protect yourself from unscrupulous competitors (are there any other kind?)

Most important of all are his rules for design and for startups.

His basic rule for coming up with new products goes like this:

Find a durable consumer product that every household buys. Find out what bugs people about this product. Use technology to dramatically improve its performance -- preferably find the technology in other industries. Look for new materials providing superior durability. Prototype, prototype, prototype. Test, test, test. Then design outward for style and ergonomics (Form follows function.) Don't listen to others. Don't hire consultants. Market and manufacture it yourself. You can learn any subject in 6 months (I think that's a little quick but the point is well made). Keep improving (Japanese style Kaisen) once you have developed your new product (he's developed many improved models once he went into production).

I really enjoyed this book and recommend it heartedly. I wondered though if Dyson wasn't a bit too cantankarous for his own good. I often wondered why he ended up in so many lawsuits and business deals gone awry. Were all his competitors ruthless? Or was he difficult to establish business relationships with? We will never know, and perhaps it's not that important. But there's lots to learn by reading this book. I understand he has another book, self-published, just on the design and invention aspects and I hope to get that book also. I'll check with the wife to see if we need another sweeper. He says they really suck. In fact it sucks up to three times more than competitors. Well, that's his humor not mine.

This book should be required reading at all business schools.

John Dunbar
Sugar Land, TX

Edison Lives Today
The story told here, an autobiography, is one of the most inspiring that I've read in a long time. Dyson is an inventor and industrial designer who has taken his bagless vacuum cleaner from the garage to a huge enterprise. I loved this story and wound up really admiring the man. His distinctive approach to industrial design, his perseverance and gutsy self confidence enabled him to show that even in the world of huge multinationals, with all their central research laboratories, there are still opportunities for the lone inventor to make it, big-time.

I especially enjoyed the part about the early development of the machine, in which he made something like one version per day for over three years, varying things one at a time, measuring everything to exhaustion, all the while sinking further and further into debt. Edisonian it was, but sometimes that is the only way--the quest for the quick breakthrough emphasized by modern industrial managers can be a real obstacle to progress. I've seen it at work first-hand.

The book is rather lavishly produced with ten pages of glossy photos, many of them in color, supplemented by many sketches and drawings. The big margins and the attractive typeface on acid-free paper combine to make a very pretty book, worth owning.

This is the sort of book that once you put it down, you feel better about the world, the striving of man-the-builder, and realize that, even in England, things can get better.

Stories of an Innovator: Building the Better Vacuum Cleaner
This book is subtitled "an autobiography," but it isn't really about James Dyson, the man. It is about James Dyson, the inventor and designer who conquered the vacuum cleaner market. The difference? Dyson includes everything that might explain his success as an inventor, but gives only limited attention to his personal or interior life. Dyson briefly mentions some crucial points, like the strain his ongoing travels put on his marriage, or his wonderment at his companies' many lawsuits, but if you're seeking a man's inside emotional story, this isn't it. However, if you're looking for an exciting account of an inventor who proceeds, as Dyson puts it, in an Edisonian fashion, read this book. We recommend it to anyone engaged in design, engineering, marketing or innovation. The stories it contains, especially the descriptions of inspiration or frustration - are refreshing in this theoretical age, as is his advice on creating and marketing innovative products. Dyson's book proves that a vital place still exists for individual vision and old-fashioned perseverance.