James Dyson

James Dyson is a British designer, amongst other things. He studied furniture and interior design and then moved into engineering at the Royal College of Art, eventually switching into industrial design.

He is famous for his vacuum cleaners, where he took a cyclonic separation approach so that it wouldn’t lose suction as the vacuum cleaner picked up dirt. He made over 5000 prototypes of this vacuum cleaner before releasing the actual unit in 1983. This original vacuum was rejected by all of the major manufacturers, and Dyson set off to start is own company.

The company was quite successful, and this led Dyson to develop a company with strong design philosophy that has delved into various consumer products, build buildings globally, and takes highly creative approaches to training it’s staff. They have gone as far as developing an electric car that was eventually found to be not commercially viable.

Mr. Dyson now also pursues various philanthropic efforts through the James Dyson foundation encouraging young children to pursue careers in engineering and science. He has also invested heavily in healthcare, and has gone so far as to develop the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology where college drop outs are able to both work at Dyson, and study with the end goal of becoming engineers at Dyson. The institute was developed in 2017 and no one who has gone through the training has left the company. At this institute, the students pay no tuition but earn a full salary.

Dyson has also pursued farming in a carbon neutral, circular farming system that produces strawberries, maize, wheat, beats, peas, etc all while generating electricity and uses renewables for it’s base electrical inputs.

1.  “Failure Doesn’t Suck”. Fast Company. 1 May 2007. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
2. https://www.dyson.com/james-dyson