Ravings of a Madman

Just read a great article in Fast Company about James Dyson…. sorry… SIR James Dyson.  He’s definately my new hero.  I’m sure you’ve heard of his company which makes the Dyson vacuum.  It is the best selling vacuum in the USA and he is a pretty rich guy in Britain (now).
Takeaways

• His vacuum took 5126 failures over 15 years and he spent his life savings before he finally hit upon a design that worked.  His words: “But I learned from each one. That’s how I came up with a solution.”
• “But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path.”  Iterative process is where it’s at.
• Design and Engineering should be taught as one discipline.  Hear, hear.
• Rather than the way schools currently teach (theory first, practical second), teach the practical elements of engineering to kids – that will make kids want to learn the theory.  I’ll never forget my dad showing me mixing one colorless liquid with another colorless liquid and a bright, gorgeous red color coming out of it for 15 seconds or so.  And then it went back to colorless.  If he had tried to teach me about the chemicals and how they bond and react first, it would have went in one ear and out the other.  SHOW me what happens, and then I was all about finding out WHY it happened.  Exploit the natural curiosity of kids (or adults for that matter) and you have one of the best teaching tools out there.
• Perseverance – “A lot of people give up when the world seems to be against them, but that’s the point when you should push a little harder.”

You can read the Fast Company article Failure doesn’t suck Part 1 and Part 2.

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