Innovator Profile Series 6: James Dyson (1947-Present)

"What I often do is just think of a completely obtuse thing to do, almost the wrong thing to do. That often works because you start a different approach, something no one has tried.” – Sir James Dyson

In March of 2017, the Dyson company was voted by the British public as the most reputable brand in the country. It beat all other rivals based upon factors such as products, innovation, leadership, workplace practices and performance. This is the story of the man—a rather kind and classy man—often called “the godfather of gadgets” who made that happen and turned his company into a whirlwind of over-the-top innovation. He’s 71 years old, a modest multibillionaire who is joyously working as hard as ever to make a difference from his life for the benefit of others. Hollywood agents could immediately cast him as the quintessential, hard-charging inventor who adores what he does and wouldn’t quit for anything. 

Sir James Dyson is a British inventor, entrepreneur, industrial designer, marketer and founder of the Dyson company. He’s the classic definition of the iconic, preeminent “disruptor” engineer and inspired innovator—he makes the ordinary extraordinary and the better, the best. Dyson usually chooses the descriptive badge of “engineer” (though he knows he is an “innovator”) as he notes that the word “engineer” and its Latin etymology in generare means “to create.” His company’s 58 excellent products generated $4.8 billion in sales in 2017. He just opened his first retail demo store in New York City.

He’s the game-changing Steve Jobs of home appliances — vacuum cleaners, fans, hand and hair dryers, washing machines and now he’s excitedly branching off into electric cars. I call him a distinguished “Knight of Innovation” because money is not his primary motivator—making a difference and “doing the impossible” are. The growth of his company is fueled by technology, relentless invention and long-term thinking, the last of which is much easier because he owns the company and is essentially immune to Wall Street and quarterly profit performance as public corporations are. He fortunately says, “I love the independence of owning 100 percent of the shares, of having to think only about the products and not to worry about shareholders. In that sense, we're completely free.”

He shares a work ethic with Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Walt Disney, Edwin Land and other exceptional people who just want to be artistically creative and out-innovate all others for the sheer joy and satisfaction of it. As a visionary and possibility thinker, he sees things others miss. Behind his revolutionary vacuum cleaners and other products is a special man and company that place research, engineering, imaginative thinking and innovation front and center in his company’s culture, vision and mission. There’s a lot to learn from him. 

Dyson says, “We see problems and difficulties and restrictions and we develop technology to overcome that, and then put it into a product that performs and works better.” For example, the reason there weren’t cordless vacuums (operating on battery power) until The Dyson DC59 came out was because at that time you could not make cordless machines powerful enough to do a great job. Dyson engineers developed these really interesting, high-powered motors that were four times faster than anyone else has made them.The motors were highly efficient and small, but powerful enough to create a breakthrough product.

Dyson likely never thought he would be a knighted billionaire (estimated net worth of $5.4 billion as of June 2018) and builder of a leading company selling exceptional products in over 50 countries. That’s quite impressive for a man who said that when he started off, he was working in a shed behind his house and all he had was an electric drill. Stick-to-it-ness, don’t quit, but find a solution—even if it takes seemingly endless tries—has made Sir Dyson UK’s greatest and most admired living innovators. He loves what he does and proudly says, “I like living on the edge.” Even now, not content to make supremely leading appliances, Dyson revealed in September 2017 its own electric car to launch in 2020. R&D will cost at least $2.8 billion. If history from Dyson’s prior conquests is any indication of what to expect, his electric vehicle will be different and better and perhaps in a class and category of its own.

Sir Dyson actually began his education and career as a designer. After attending the prestigious Gresham’s school in Holt, North Norfolk, he attended the Byam Shaw School of Art in London for a year (1965-66) then went on to study interior and furniture design during 1966-70 at the Royal College of Art where he saw the powerful creative possibilities of combining design with engineering.

HIS INNOVATION QUEST STARTED WITH A DISLIKE AND GROWING FRUSTRATION

Dyson’s father died when he was only 9, so he did household chores to assist his mother. He hated replacing the vacuum cleaner bag and having to pick up the things that the machine did not suck up. As the bag filled up with dirt, dust and debris, the suction power waned because the vacuum cleaner bag needs to collect the material, but allow air to pass through the tiny pores in the bag to maintain air flow and thus suction. The debris quickly clogs these pores, thus blocking the needed airflow. 

Fast forward to 1979 when he was working along with his wife Deirdre again faithfully doing vacuuming chores. He had to empty their vacuum bag, but could not find a replacement, so he reached a peak point of frustration. With his unique lifelong hatred of the the way a vacuum cleaner worked, he made a decision to create a bagless one that worked much better. What might not have so deeply bothered a vast majority of others, irked Dyson to the extent he committed to doing something about it really big.

His idea was to scrap the bag found in all traditional floor vacuums and replace it with a spinning motor that creates a powerful cyclone of air to suck the carpets clean without losing suction power. He actually got the idea when he noticed a cyclone separator used to get rid of wood dust in the air in an industrial sawmill. The incredibly difficult part was to miniaturize the device to fit within a vacuum and be reliable. He first tried using a crude cardboard cyclone, then tried rolled brass and finally settled on polycarbonate plastic that was more durable. He discovered by experimenting that to ensure best pickup of debris, putting a smaller cyclone in a bigger one would maintain ideal speed and centrifugal force. This cyclone technology uses an astounding 150,000g’s of centrifugal force to filter elements from the unrestricted airflow, that doesn’t clog or lose suction. 

It took Dyson, working in his coach house on a farm in the Cotswolds, a mind-boggling 5,127 tweaks and modifications over five years (really 15 years from the time he came up with the idea) to get it just right to produce the DC01 the first in the Dyson Dual Cyclone range of vacuum cleaners that went to market in 1993. For two years he went through the UK and Europe to look for someone to license his product until finally a company in Japan took it on. Dyson echoed what many innovators sadly discover, “The people who rejected it did so for no good reason, which told me they were not interested in technological advances.” No doubt, the development of his vacuum was an arduous and excruciatingly tedious creative process. Then trying to market it after rejection after rejection had to take its toll. So few people, even “go-getters” would be willing to endure that exhausting long path strewn with pitfalls and obstacles to eventual triumph. 

The ever optimistic and patient Dyson admitted that he learned something with each iteration and modification. That’s the indelible mark of a true master innovator who is so rare in today’s attention deficit, get-it-done-quick world. He simply cannot be satisfied to develop products that are slightly, incrementally better. He and his elite team of researchers, engineers and designers almost have an obsession to add more power, efficiency, value, performance and a sheer W-O-W factor to their products. Even his classic vacuum cleaner has been reworked and reintroduced over 35 times. Dyson admits that he sees his products as children. What consumer can complain about that passion, dedication and beyond grasp work ethic?

STRONG CHARACTER SHAPES THIS INNOVATOR

In school, he excelled in long distance running. Dyson said, “I was quite good at it, not because I was physically good, but because I had more determination. I learnt determination from it.” That determination was a core characteristic that served him well right from the very beginning of his career and is a vital staple characteristic of all successful innovators who go down new areas that have not been explored and charted before. Finding one’s way to new discoveries takes dogged determination, the likes of which Dyson richly possessed. In 1997, Dyson wrote and published (with Giles Coren) Against the Odds, his autobiographical story of his diehard persistence in the face of his almost never-ending onslaught of discouragement.

Another aspect of Dyson’s sterling character is his optimism when times get really tough. While most people would shed their dream, Dyson is like the Energizer Bunny— he just keeps going and going and going. From 1979 through the early 1980s, he was working on his cyclonic technology and getting further and further into debt. Bankruptcy didn’t phase him, but he did worry about losing his house. Luckily, he had a very understanding and supportive wife who sold paintings and taught art classes and borrowed money frequently. They made do and sacrificed by growing their own vegetables and she made clothes for the children.

He uses good old-fashioned roll-your-sleeves-up hard work and persistence in his innovation model of unconventional thinking, researching, experimenting, testing and refining until the end product is something unique, better and of course, really innovative.That was his Edisonian approach to design: making prototype after prototype until he got it just right… got it perfect. Dyson studied classics at school, but had a love of painting on the side. That was a clue to his love of creativity and the beauty of art that he instilled in his product designs later on.

To pay it forward and make a difference, Dyson created the James Dyson Foundation in 2002 with the goal of inspiring young people to study engineering and enter the workforce as dedicated engineers. Innovators learn by doing and exploring. So, in one of his programs he introduced a training tool called Dyson’s Engineering Box that challenges students to dismantle and assemble mechanical devices. They are also involved in 3-D printing and robotics design, two technologies that will significantly grow and improve in the future. He created the impressive and challenging Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology, unlike any other educational establishment. 

Dyson is a tireless champion for technology-driven economic development and he believes that governments should have an important leadership role in spurring innovation. Helping people to be more curious and to think and act differently toward engineering, science and other strategic areas, is at the very heart of creating and sustaining forward movement and especially quantum leap progress in industries and society. Dyson wants to accelerate that.

It’s almost always intuitively obvious to smart innovators that their idea, concept or solution is practical, workable and blatantly superior. Thinking that others would immediately understand, see and appreciate it is usually, unfortunately, not the case at all. That’s where patience, grit, and perseverance becomes vital to weather the disappointments, setbacks, frustrations and hair-pulling fits of “why can’t they see what I know, even when I fully explain it to them.” Dyson has deeply felt the sting of disbelief and rejection. But, like other life-long innovators, he had an obsession—in his case to make elegant, easy-to-use best-in-class products that people wanted to use on a regular basis, That stubborn, but positive obsession pushed and pulled him through the toughest of times.

At his Dyson headquarters in Wiltshire, UK, more than 600 of his engineers are busy thinking about and developing new (and sometimes radical) concepts and technology each day. The company is actually UK’s biggest and most aggressive investor in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). They use 3D printing to quickly create numerous prototypes, each iteration a bit different and better. Dyson’s goal is to invest a staggering third of its profits on research into new products. He makes money by making unrivaled products, rather than worrying about making stockholders richer by being cost conscious and risk averse at the expense of constraining continuous innovation.

FAILING IS HIS “BADGE OF HONOR” AND PASSION IS HIS DRIVER 

The world’s most successful innovators of all times wear smart failure as a proud badge of honor. “We fail every day. Foster an environment where failure is embraced,” Dyson says with unabashed pride. Dumb failures occur when one repeats the same mistakes and learns nothing useful from it. Failing has dissuaded a vast majority of people from exploring and trying new things, whether technology, processes, systems, business models, new management concepts or product/service innovations. They see a stigma attached to “failure.” Yet without stumbling and experiencing (often painful and frustrating) setbacks, progress is surely halted. Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Sir James Dyson and other prominent innovators, for example, are usually either psychologically, operationally and financially inoculated against the effects of failures. Instead, they capitalize on smart failure, where they discover what works and didn’t… and improve from each iteration that leads to eventual breakthroughs and quantum leaps. 

Dyson, who is a modern day Thomas Edison once told the Wall Street Journal that his success is due to “perseverance, taking risks and having a willingness to fail. We fail every day,” he noted. “Failure is the best medicine—as long as you learn something.” That is what what enables Dyson to turn everyday products into gold. The business world really needs to change the word “failure,” along with its negative connotation and context into something more enlightened, more palatable to those engaged employees who seek change and progress, but don’t want to be labeled with and punished by “failing.”

Dyson advises, “Be bold. Be stubborn. Great ideas meet great resistance.” Every significant innovation affects the specific market, business model and competitive situation of current producers. Dyson knew he would face some mighty challenges, but he blew through it, “When I first introduced the bagless vacuum, I was laughed off by every vacuum and appliance company you can think of. Even when they were satisfied that the technology worked, they were more interested in defending the market for vacuum cleaner bags, which made more money than the vacuums themselves — the razor blade and computer printer ink business models.”

When you think about appliances, for example, what person actually exudes such levels of passion into what we think are just utilitarian devices to get the job done. But, those special innovators like Dyson have deep and abiding passion for products whether they are appliances, cars, electronic devices, photography equipment, gadgets and all other objects we use. Most designers and product engineers see incremental improvements made to such things. Luckily, we have visionaries like Dyson who believe that anything—and everything—can be reimagined, reinvented and reengineered to boost the operation and performance of such devices as to make a big difference in their use. Walt Disney called that improvement process “Plussing”—giving it something different and better to add value to it. Dyson is right when he says that topflight engineers’ real passion is for solving problems, winning against the odds and even “doing the impossible.” 

He has been working on robotic vacuum cleaners for seemingly forever. They created a masterpiece of engineering and performance that never went into production. THE DC06 worked incredibly well because of an amazing mix of electronic brains, 70 sensors and three on-board computers that gave it impressive suction power. It was, however, prohibitively expensive to build. So, why try and spend all that research money in the first place? Answer: to learn valuable lessons from it, so the next future offshoots will be much less expensive and still perform better than other competitors. 

The mantra of his R&D department might as well be, “Cheaper, better, faster, more powerful, reliable and quieter.” So based off the DC06, Dyson introduced the 360 Eye? floor-cleaning robot that uses a 360 degree panoramic vision sensor and IR distance sensors to map a room and effectively navigate around it. The robot’s digital motor makes over 3,000 adjustments a second. Dyson noted that a car has about 40 electric motors and airplanes have a huge number of them. He visualizes that if you can revolutionize the size, efficiency and performance of these electric motors, you can make a quantum leap forward in a myriad of exciting applications, especially for new breakthrough products, not yet developed.

CHALLENGING CONVENTIONAL THINKING MAKES EXCEPTIONAL PRODUCTS

Innovation is often an iterative process, whereby people collect and try new things based upon what they learned and experienced. They will then smartly transfer concepts, processes and mechanical workings from one area to the other. Most importantly, innovators will question assumptions about what is the conventional design or use of something. For example, in 1974 Dyson founded his company to first produce a new type of wheelbarrow called the Ballbarrow?, that instead of having a narrow wheel in front that limited its turning ability and often caused it to get stuck in soft or muddy ground, replaced the wheel with a round ball for superior movement and maneuverability and spread the load in the wheelbarrow-like plastic hopper much better. It was far stabler and lighter than a traditional wheelbarrow.

Later on, he and his team put a ball device on their vacuum to enable it to tun and move with the flick of a wrist. Dyson employs continuous product improvements in the unending quest to create the most powerful vacuum with valuable features not available in other products. In the Dyson Ball Animal 2? vacuum cleaner, for example, it incorporates more than 180 patents in one machine. It has a glass-reinforced polypropylene ball that increases movement stability and maneuverability. The ball actually has the motor inside it with over 100 key components. When the ball’s axis tilts, its turning circle tightens, allowing easy and accurate steering. It’s quite a model of excellent and elegant engineering. Rather than using what I call sudden “blunt force creativity” to try to solve a problem, Dyson methodically and patiently uses numerous incremental adjustments and key modifications, that add up to important breakthroughs.

Regarding impressive motors in their products, for almost 20 years, the Dyson company has been developing some of the most technologically advanced V4 Dyson motors that are small, efficient and reliable. The Dyson digital motor is a complex machine with 22 different components. It takes 50 different robots and a high precision, fully automated production line to construct. Their new digital V2 motor is incredibly small and efficient and spins at an amazing 100,000 rpm, making their DC44 Animal the most powerful cordless vacuum available, while also honing the materials and components in their traditional lithium battery to extend full-power run time by an impressive 25 percent. 

Dyson more than most businesspeople realizes the vital importance of manufacturing to a company and nation, “Manufacturing is more than just putting parts together. It’s coming up with ideas, testing principles and perfecting the engineering, as well as final assembly.” In that case, manufacturing certainly plays a key role in product quality and performance improvements, cost reduction and other innovations that might have gone unrealized. 

A FEW EXAMPLES OF HIS OTHER OTHER RADICALLY ENGINEERED PRODUCTS

Dyson took his ideas and expertise from his vacuum cleaners to create a redesigned hand dryer called the Airblade?. People become impatient drying their hands with traditional machines that took quite a while using hot air. Dyson’s machines uses a narrow, more powerful blast of cool air to get the job done in about 12-14 seconds. The latest versions cost up to 80 percent less to run and produce up to 85 percent less carbon dioxide than other hand dryers. In the spirit of his company’s continuous innovation practice, they are 30 percent quieter than Dyson’s previous model. They also have a fashionable model perfect for restaurants and other commercial establishments that enables a person to conveniently wash and dry their hands at the sink called the Airblade Wash + Dry?. How clever, practical and useful!

In the quest to build a better washing machine, he and his team developed the CR01. Beforehand, like any good group of problem solvers, they investigated a variety of ways to ideally wash clothes from using a microwave to simple hand washing (which came out on top as the best technique to do it). Dyson’s design was to build two counter-rotating drums that manipulated clothes and other fabrics in the same way that effective (vigorous or gentle) hand washing did, resulting in a quicker and better wash result. The problem was that the washer was too expensive to manufacture compared to competitors and he charged less than he should have, losing money on it. Like other impressive innovations, it was a technical success, but not a commercial one. Yet, Dyson said he had “enormous fun” working on that project. Even in those projects that don’t somehow pan out, there are benefits such as new learning situations, project team bonding, ability to transfer ideas to other projects and experiencing the joy and satisfaction of achieving something no one else has done.

Who ever heard of a fan without blades? Now you do. Dyson engineered a series of elegantly-designed fans, called Air Multipliers?, sans blades that are powerful, quiet and safe. He and his team looked at traditional fans that were noisy and produced choppy air and decided to reinvent a fan that projected a stream of powerful, smooth and high-velocity airflow and made them easy and quick to clean. 

Dyson examined current electric hair dryers and quickly saw that they were large, unwieldy and can damage air because of their excessive heat. So, his teams came up with the Supersonic?, a high-tech, radically redesigned hair dryer that marked the company’s entry into health and beauty products. Its powerful motor is only 1/4 the size and weight of other motors in these devices and is fitted within the handle. Along with its overall new shape, the handle gives the person much better balance and comfort during its extended use. The motor actually spins at 110,000 revolutions per minute compared to the typical 15,000. Conventional hair dryers heat up rapidly when held near the hair because they build up pressure there. The Supersonic? has a control chip within it to regulate how much pressure it creates so it does not develop excess heat that damages the natural shine of hair. 

Check out his outstanding vacuums and other wonderfully-engineered products at www.dyson.com to fully appreciate how he and his remarkable engineering and innovation teams have reimagined and reinvented products we use every day.

CULTURE AND HIRING PRACTICE THAT SUPPORTS AND PROMOTES INNOVATION

Anyone who studies organizational innovation will tell you that a key factor that determines the level and sustainability of innovation primarily has to do with the culture in that organization. Culture is like a petrie dish that grows creative thinking along with the application, implementation and commercialization of those ideas and imaginative solutions. In such a culture, employees and their managers and leaders are fixated and rewarded for their innovation. Their beliefs, values, attitudes, curiosity and behaviors are aligned with the organization’s vision and mission and sharply focused on being innovative in meaningful ways. Innovation is genetically encoded in their work practices. It’s not a program or a project or some management edict — innovation is in their organization’s DNA structure. It is especially true in Dyson’s company. 

Like others things there, hiring is unconventional. Since Sir Dyson has experienced the rejection, criticism and disdain of “experts” in his early years of experimentation and development of his vacuums, he has his managers hire young, fresh graduates who are untainted and unsullied by the weight and oftentimes arrogance bred from prior successful experience. The Dyson organization looks to recruit the brightest young, open-minded individuals who are passionate about solving problems and exploring unconventional approaches and who persist until they achieve success. 

The company has more than 2,000 engineers and scientists and the average age of their research team is 26. They recruit about half of their people right out of the university. In projects, they give genuine responsibility from day one to these bright young people, but smartly insert a few seasoned professionals who have external expertise and skills as mentors and coaches. Dyson notes that he expects these new employees to always question why something works and then to solve problems in novel and superior ways. He adamantly supports clean-sheet-thinking, “I’m not interested in how a problem was solved last time. I want to find the best way to solve it this time. Don’t just blindly do things they way they have always been done—take a new approach and take a risk. It leads to better, more interesting outcomes.”

Dyson believes that people who possess curiosity and are frustrated by the mediocre status quo and who have fire in their belly for making things work better are the best game-changing engineers and employees.This problem-solving approach permeates all of his company’s departments, not just those responsible for product research or development. Everyone is expected to try to master their skill in attacking a problem (or capitalizing upon an opportunity) creatively using their “cerebral nunchucks.”

“Not Invented Here” (NIH) syndrome is a rigid corporate mindset and culture that favors internally-developed products, services, processes and business models, for example over externally-developed or influenced ones, even when the external ideas or solutions are superior. Not so with Dyson. Unlike many “insulated” companies that shun outside collaboration, Dyson uses university relationships to ramp up technical expertise quickly and open the door to even more diverse and rich ideas and talents from others. 

They invest in and team up with more than 40 universities around the world with each one having technical expertise and successful results with battery development, robotics, motors, robotics, fluid dynamics, graphene and other areas. Dyson leverages this expertise to improve current products, develop new ones and expand possibilities into new areas. Dyson wants their engineers to use lateral thinking fo follow tangents, challenge convention and explore new, exciting uses for their core technologies. Even when a product goes to market, Dyson engineers and designers continue to tinker with it because the culture there encourages them to always make it better. Dyson’s philosophy is that if you see a big problem—something that has a big Achilles’ heel, “You can proceed in one of two ways: You either develop a technology to solve the problem, or you happen to come across a technology that solves the problem.” There’s absolutely no place for unaligned fiefdoms, closed-mindedness, disruptive politics, prima donnas, arrogance or NIH behavior in innovative organizations such as his. 

BIG ASPIRATION OF A TRANSCENDENT INNOVATOR

Successful, lifelong innovators are cut from a different cloth and march to a different drummer. Dyson emphasized that he always somehow wanted to be different. As a child he chose to play the bassoon, because everyone else was playing violins. When he grew up, he wanted to do not only different, but better things as he waxed philosophic, “You want to change the world and that sounds very grand, but you want to do something that no one has done before and that’s what I want to do and I’ve built up this wonderful group of engineers and scientists around me who believe in that.” 

No doubt that Dyson is still working hard, still changing things and has “made a dent in the universe” as Apple founder Steve Jobs would call it. Einstein said, “The one who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The one who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has been before.” And so it is with the remarkable, the unusual, the unconventional Sir James Dyson.

INNOVATION LEARNING LESSONS FROM JAMES DYSON

1. Create, then grow and nurture your company’s vital culture of creativity and innovation.
2. Copy or buy or create a strategic alliance to get ideas and solutions from all over — from different products, technologies, processes, systems, mechanisms and different industries, people and manufacturing places.
3. Be totally open to interesting and unusual solutions, concepts or approaches from everyone, whether they are novices, young, old, experienced, educated or uneducated. Look for ideas in the most unusual places at all times. 
4. Play with outrageous, impractical, contradictory or seemingly “silly” ideas, some variation of offshoot of which can lead to a breakthrough solution or other valuable practical use.
5. Change your entire mindset about the word “failure.” All important innovations involve going down blind alleys, uncharted courses and unexplored regions. As a result, there will be setbacks, confusion, disappointments and moments where you will question the direction you are taking or the goal you are pursuing. “Fail smartly and quickly—fail forward” in a learning mode to gain important knowledge of what works and doesn’t. Don’t just accept failures, but use them as a positive steeping stone to create better solutions. As Dyson said, “We have to embrace failure and almost get a kick out of it. Not in a perverse way, but in a problem-solving way. Life is a mountain of solvable problems and I enjoy that.”
6. Develop mental and emotional armor-plating against people who criticize, make fun of or belittle your innovative efforts. As “Sir Innovation” puts it, “You mustn’t be worried about what people will say about you. If you want to do something different, you’re going to come up against a lot of naysayers.”
7. Take more calculated risks. Big companies typically eschew those risks that entrepreneurs cut their wisdom teeth on. Because business and technology are constantly changing and evolving, smart risk takers will beat those competitors who play it too safely, too cautiously, too slowly. Backbones always beat wishbones!
8. Have FUN exploring, experimenting, discovering… and innovating! The journey along to achievement is often more exciting than the anticipated destination.
9. Continuously create something new and better. Feel good about and celebrate your victories, but don’t rest on your laurels, as they say. Great innovators have always been about what comes next—hopefully something even bigger, bolder and more impacting than previous innovations. Move onward and upward! Dyson plans to launch over 100 new products around the world in the next few years.
10. Don’t be naively mislead by those who simply have lots of experience and impressive credentials in their field. Dyson states, “Don’t listen to experts.” He found they often say something can’t possibly be done or be done cost effectively. So many “experts” stifle others by their own rigid opinions, beliefs and ideas, that were perhaps once very valid and valuable, but now outdated, counterproductive or suboptimal.
11. It’s important to have heroes who inspire you to better success and greatness of character and achievement. Dyson had Frank Whittle (born 1907), British inventor and aviator who invented the jet engine. Dyson was impressed that he amazingly got things right the first time along with his extraordinary foresight and dogged pursuit of a better aircraft engine despite the incredulous lack of interest from the air ministry. 
12. Create an open environment and working climate where everyone is engaged, involved, enthusiastic and appreciated. Never put down someone for making what you think is a silly suggestion or outrageous idea.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ray Anthony is the dynamic Chief “Innovader” at Anthony Innovation Group in The Woodlands, Texas, USA. He is the author of 8 books and over 100 articles on organization change, innovation, leadership, creativity, sales, presentation skills and other strategic business topics. His latest, vanguard book, Innovative Presentations For Dummies (Wiley Publishing) shows how to powerfully reimagine, reinvent and remake presentations that win against the toughest odds. Ray is a successful executive coach, corporate trainer, videographer, producer and dynamic keynote speaker who has worked with Fortune 500 corporations and elite U.S. government agencies to help improve their operational and financial performance through innovation. He can be reached at [email protected] or office: 281-364-7739 or cell: 832-594-4747.