...------------------------------------------------- Dyson Case Study Essay Introduction In “Inside Dyson: a distinctive company?”, Shepherd et al. (2011) gives details of the secret of Dyson’s success – the company specializing in innovative, design-heavy vacuum cleaners and other household appliances. The successes and failures of Dyson’s design efforts (from their successful vacuums to the 3-in-1 vacuums that did not test well with customers) are explored, as well as their unique perspective on business, which puts quality and innovation above anything else. 1. Using frameworks from the chapter, analyze the strategic capabilities of Dyson. The strategic capabilities of Dyson revolve primarily around a resource-based view of the strategy with a heavy focus on engineering design; they spend a tremendous amount of time developing and engineering prototypes for household products that seek to provide a twist to the typical device (e.g., vacuum cleaners that provide smooth turning around the corners, oscillating fans that “multiply” air, etc.) This creates a niche in what can be an overly-saturated market. Providing a unique spin of this sort on a product can offer tremendous advantages. Combine this with state-of-the-art, sleek design elements and bright, colorful exteriors, and Dyson creates a number of high-end, well-sought-after appliances. Dyson invests heavily in Chinese and Asian manufacturing in order to make their products cheaper, so that they can maintain profit margin...
Words: 1028 - Pages: 5
... ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- GROUP MEMBERS: HUMPHREY NSAMA (BAPSM) ------------------------------------------------- OSCAR HAMANGABA (BAPSM) ------------------------------------------------- LWIZYA M. MWENGWE (BAPSM) ------------------------------------------------- STANLEY NGANGULA (BAPSM) ------------------------------------------------- DANIEL YOMENA (bapsm) ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ASSESSMENT: ASSIGNMENT NO. 2 (‘INSIDE DYSON’ A DISTINCTIVE . COMPANY) ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Number of Words: 1,647...
Words: 1793 - Pages: 8
...M17_HOLL6227_05_SE_C17.qxd 5/20/10 4:06 PM Page 641 CASE STUDY IV.3 Dyson Vacuum Cleaner: shifting from domestic to international marketing with the famous bagless vacuum cleaner The Dyson history It is impossible to separate the very British Dyson vacuum cleaner from its very British inventor. Together they are synonymous with innovation and legal battles against established rivals. James Dyson was born in Norfolk in 1947. He studied furniture design and interior design at the Royal College of Art from 1966 to 1970 and his first product, the Sea Truck, was launched while he was still Courtesy of Dyson. studying. Dyson’s foray into developing vacuum cleaner technology happened by chance. In 1978, while renovating his 300-year-old country house, Dyson became frustrated with the poor performance of his conventional vacuum cleaner. Whenever he went to use it, there was poor suction. One day he thought he would find out what was wrong with the design. He noted that the appliance worked by drawing air through the bag to create suction, but when even a fine layer of dust got inside, it clogged its pores, stopping the airflow and suction. In his usual style of seeking solutions from unexpected sources, Dyson noticed how a nearby sawmill used a cyclone – a 30-foot-high cone that spun dust out of the air by centrifugal force – to expel waste. He reasoned that a vacuum cleaner that could separate dust by cyclonic action and spin it out of the ...
Words: 4914 - Pages: 20
...Title: Inside Dyson A case study Student Name: Margaret Lynch Student ID: 10137149 Module Code: MG4918 Date of Submission: 26/02/2014 Inside Dyson: a distinctive company Analysis the varying types of strategic capabilities of Dyson. Dyson is a world renowned company that is fronted very publically by Sir James Dyson. It is involved in the manufacture of among other things the vacuum cleaner and is constantly striving to develop new initiatives. Research and development is a major factor with this company and there has been and continues to be major investment of both time and money into this aspect of the firm. For the purpose of this case study analysis a SWOT analysis will be used on the available evidence on the Dyson Company to explore and define the strategic capabilities unique to this company. A SWOT analysis is a look at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that can affect an organisation. Johnson et al (2011) affirms that a summary of a SWOT analysis can be helpful when attempting to prioritize strategic capabilities especially when consolidating other available data (Johnson, 2011). It is sufficient for the purpose of this essay and will be used as a simple tool to assess the available data from the case study. A SWOT analysis in this case can be examined using the Value, Rarity, Inimitability and Non-Substitutability (VRIN) framework to assess the competitive position of the company. Johnson (2011) states that managers must look at...
Words: 2451 - Pages: 10
...Introduction 3 1) A creator: James Dyson 3 2) Early products by James Dyson 4 3) A new idea 4 4) The $ 2000 vacuum cleaner 4 5) The first Dyson 4 3. Product 5 1) Vacuum cleaners 5 2) Hand Dryer 5 3) Washing Machine 6 4. R&D 7 5. Marketing 7 1) Evolution of Dyson in the market 7 2) Turnover 8 3) Differentiation Strategy 9 4) Focus Strategy 10 5) Cost Strategy 10 6. Innovation 11 1) The innovator’s challenge 11 2) Fast transition from concept to 3D 11 3) Rapid prototypes from design data 12 4) Computer simulation boosts design accuracy 12 5) Protecting their innovations 13 7. Analysis 13 1) Porter’s Five Force Model 13 Existing Rivalry 14 Bargaining Power of Supplier 14 Potential Entrants 14 Threat of Substitutes 14 Bargaining Power of Buyer 15 2) SWOT Analysis 15 Strength 15 Weakness 15 Opportunity 15 Threat 16 1. Abstract In 1978, James Dyson noticed that the air filter of the workshop where the spraying finishing operations on Ballbarrow models was constantly obstructed powder particles (like a vacuum cleaner bag is blocked by dust). He has designed and manufactured industrial cyclone tower, which removed the powder particles by exerting a centrifugal force 100 000 times the force of gravity. The same principle could he operate in a vacuum? James Dyson began to work. Five years and 5,127 prototypes later, the first Dual Cyclone bagless Vacuum cleaner was created. Then a legend of Dyson was come into being. He cooperated...
Words: 4311 - Pages: 18
...Sir James Dyson Lunetta Clark Indiana Wesleyan University BSMO240 MGT-432 Organizational Behavior February 4, 2014 Dr. Marcus Myers I have read and understand the plagiarism policy as outlined in the syllabus and the sections in the Student Catalog relating to the IWU Honesty/Cheating Policy. By affixing this statement to the title page of my paper, I certify that I have not cheated or plagiarized in the process of completing this assignment. If it is found that cheating and/or plagiarism did take place in the writing of this paper, I understand the possible consequences of the act/s, which could include expulsion from Indiana Wesleyan University. Sir James Dyson When we allow ourselves to make mistakes, we free ourselves from all constraints of seeking perfection and we open ourselves up to all kinds of opportunities and possibilities. We free ourselves to attempt new things or to aim higher. We know that by allowing ourselves to make mistakes, there is no emphasis on getting it right or doing it well. Instead, we create learning experiences that assist us to develop and to grow. When you grant yourself willingness to make mistakes, you open the world up to you. While we learn by studying and listening, we will learn the most by doing. Although we will demonstrate our abilities through successes, we will learn through our mistakes. Mistakes are a way for us to get feedback so we can do it right the next time. I think James Dyson would advise a recent college...
Words: 499 - Pages: 2
...him and his sons selling vacuum cleaners after purchasing rights to an electric suction sweeper, which was invented a year before by a guy named Murray Spangler. In 1908, Hoover bought Spangler’s patent, kept him as a partner and soon named the company Hoover Suction Sweeper Co. Hoover than began marketing the sweeper in stores all throughout the country. By 1921, Hoover had gone global and by 1923, sales reached $23 million. Hoover today specializes in all floor care and is a continued leader in the industry (Hoover: Fundinguniverse, 2006). B. Bissell Inc. Company History In 1876, Melville Bissell began marketing his carpet sweeper invention with revolving brushes. The revolving brushes picked up the dust and dirt and deposited it inside the sweeper housing. Being dependent on the rotation of the wheels to drive the sweeping mechanism, it only removed debris from the uppermost regions of the carpet. It was used to clean rugs and floors and was a metal or plastic box with a long handle for means of pushing. Melville and his wife owned a small crockery shop in Grand Rapid, Michigan. His wife one day became very frustrated with the sawdust that was deep within the carpet. She presented the problem to her husband and that was when he designed and...
Words: 1456 - Pages: 6
...The Ad That Sucks You Up Jamie Andres The Ad That Sucks You Up For women in the 1940’s the thought of working outside the house was absurd. Cooking, cleaning, and babies seemed to be all the public thought they were capable of. With men being the working type, using women on ads of household appliances seemed to work wonders for the producers. It is believed this advertisement was effective because the producers knew that using women as a cover to a product intended for housewives would make the targeted audience want the product more. Hoover had more going for it than the female targets though; they had bonuses, never seen technology, and great logos to draw people in. They used everything from amazing wording to the way they drew the advertisement for their targeted audience. There is no doubt the Hoover Company made a wise decision with their advertisement techniques in the late 40’s, which benefited their company, due to their targeted consumers. There are different reasons why this advertisement was such a success. On the political side of it, unfortunately you have sexism. Women were expected to stay home, clean house, take care of their children, prepare dinner, and tend to their husband. There were views on women compared to men on an everyday basis in the late 1940's early 1950's. It was not meant in a negative way, it was just the way things were back in that time period. No matter the time frame, in most cases, women were...
Words: 958 - Pages: 4
...Business School Lausanne 2011 Dyson Vacuum Cleaner Case study Sargis Sargsyan BSL Table of Contents History……………………………………………………………………………………………………2 Dyson company and world market………………………………………………………3,4 Competitors………………………………………………………………………………………5,6,7 Question1…………………………………………………………………………………………….7,8 Question 2……………………………………………………………………………………………8,9 Question 3………………………………………………………………………………………………9 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………10 Dyson Vacuum Cleaner History Dyson Company is one of the leading companies in vacuum clear industry. The company was founded by James Dyson, who is a furniture and interior designer and his product was launched in 1966, when he was student. In 1985 James Dyson had contracted with a small company in Japan. Than in 1993 Dyson opened a research center and factory in Malmesbury by using the money from the Japanese company and developed dual cyclone vacuum cleaner, which became the fastest selling vacuum cleaner in UK. Fourteen years later Dyson could present its first product in the shop and it also presented in the Science Museum. Dyson started to develop Root 8 Cyclone, which removes more dust by using more cyclones. In 2000 he launched new innovative washing machine and in 2008 the company’s revenue reached around 700 million pound, and much of this came from vacuum cleaners sales, about two third, in outside of local market mainly from US, Australia and Japan. So now Dyson Company is one of the successful vacuum...
Words: 1769 - Pages: 8
...Dyson Case Study Dyson’s life journey is one based on a desire to solve problems, learn from mistakes, and to preserve and excel. His father’s death in 1956 when he was nine years old had a profound impact on him. He says of that time that he felt alone- different. At that time it was unusual to not have a father and that made him feel like he had to prove himself. When he entered the work world, his first boss, Jeremy Fry, also had a profound influence on his development. Dyson went to work for him, having never designed a product. He was put in charge of a company manufacturing a high-speed landing craft. His take away lesson from that experience was that someone doesn’t have to grow into a job. He believed that if you allow people to make mistakes, they’ll learn extremely quickly. He also learned to mistrust experience. Dyson was far happier to have people working around him who had freshness. In the late 1970’s, James Dyson noticed that his bag vacuum cleaner only picked up dirt properly with a new bag and that it lost suction rapidly as the bag filled. The vacuum cleaner bag needed to collect the dust, but allow air to pass through via tiny pores, in order to maintain airflow and therefore suction. In fact, the dust quickly clogged these pores and blocked the airflow. Because the air is blocked, the cleaner’s suction was reduced very quickly. Inspired by an industrial cyclone at a timber mill, he created a vacuum that used centrifugal force to separate the dust...
Words: 691 - Pages: 3
...When Dyson entered, the vacuum cleaner market was a very mature market with recognised appliance giants selling their branded vacuum cleaners comfortably without much differentiation or innovation in terms of technology. I think this played into Dyson’s hands allowing the Dual Cyclone’s disruptive, innovative & design and technology capture the harts & minds of the customer. These market conditions where a factor in the success of the Dual Cyclone. The market proved to have an appetite for something new and different. The fact that the Dyson had over 100 patents helped ensure that the large appliance giants could not quickly come to market with exactly the same technology at a lower cost. This was also a factor in securing and maintaining differentiating the Dual Cyclone and its success. The early success of the Dual Cyclone was written off as “just a fad” by competitors allowing Dyson to continue to take more and more market share. Iterating and extending the range with different versions that appealed to different users like Dyson Absolute, The De Stijl and the Antartica also helped the success of the Dual Cyclone technology capture a larger market share. Education of both the retail staff through the use of demo models and discounted pricing and of the public through television advertising also played a key role in the success of the brand. Assignment Question 2: Dyson’s service strategy was direct model aimed at ensuring and exceptional service experience for...
Words: 660 - Pages: 3
...organized to capture the value of the resources. The report analyses the intangible resource “intellectual property” of Dyson. Valuable: The intellectual property is extremely valuable to Dyson’s business success. The Dyson products such as the use of industrial cyclone tower that use centrifugal force to experiment and used the same technology to create bag less vacuum cleaners, Contrarotator washing machine, Airblade hand dryer, and handheld vacuum cleaner (Dyson Root 6) are all based on Dyson’s intellectual property. In addition, engineers and designers of Dyson are believed to be part of their core competence where they get highly trained and are encouraged to innovate. Rare: Intellectual property of Dyson is protected by patents and hence they are rare. Skilled human resources are also trained to the requirement of Dyson. The company uses patenting as a way to protect its business. Dyson is said to file one new patent every day and has about 1,300 patents (Innovation Magazine, 2014). It also maintains extreme secrecy in its design and research centres. Costly: Dyson over the years have invested on R & D and recently have announced to invest £1bn in R & D over the next four years which is in addition to annual spending 80 million in 2013 (Financial Times, 25). Therefore, it would be costly for any competitor to attain the level of innovation. Organised: Dyson is well organised to harness such resource. It keeps its R & D in the UK and provides an environment for its engineers...
Words: 270 - Pages: 2
...Failure is interesting,” Dyson tells entrepreneur.com. “It’s part of making progress. You never learn from success, but you do learn from failure. I started out with a simple idea, and by the end it got much more audacious and interesting. I got to a place I never could have imagined because I learned what worked and didn’t work. We have to embrace failure and almost get a kick out of it. Not in a perverse way, but in a problem-solving way.” Design graduate Dyson’s ultimately-successful problem-solving experiments began in 1979. “I’d purchased what claimed to be the most powerful vacuum cleaner on the market,” he tells inc.com. “But it was essentially useless. Rather than sucking up the dirt, it pushed it around the room. I’d seen an industrial sawmill which used something called a cyclonic separator to remove dust from the air, and I thought the same principle of separation might work on a vacuum cleaner. I rigged up a quick prototype, and it did.” It took five years and a further five thousand one hundred and twenty-six prototypes to perfect his design, and almost another decade of failed licensing deals and countless fruitless meetings with distributors before Dyson’s Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner finally went on sale in the UK in 1993. Having failed to interest any manufacturers in the design, Dyson had mortgaged his house to set up his own manufacturing plant. “I liked living on the edge,” he says. “All those years that my house was in hock to the bank… I liked the...
Words: 641 - Pages: 3
...Failure is interesting,” Dyson tells entrepreneur.com. “It’s part of making progress. You never learn from success, but you do learn from failure. I started out with a simple idea, and by the end it got much more audacious and interesting. I got to a place I never could have imagined because I learned what worked and didn’t work. We have to embrace failure and almost get a kick out of it. Not in a perverse way, but in a problem-solving way.” Design graduate Dyson’s ultimately-successful problem-solving experiments began in 1979. “I’d purchased what claimed to be the most powerful vacuum cleaner on the market,” he tells inc.com. “But it was essentially useless. Rather than sucking up the dirt, it pushed it around the room. I’d seen an industrial sawmill which used something called a cyclonic separator to remove dust from the air, and I thought the same principle of separation might work on a vacuum cleaner. I rigged up a quick prototype, and it did.” It took five years and a further five thousand one hundred and twenty-six prototypes to perfect his design, and almost another decade of failed licensing deals and countless fruitless meetings with distributors before Dyson’s Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner finally went on sale in the UK in 1993. Having failed to interest any manufacturers in the design, Dyson had mortgaged his house to set up his own manufacturing plant. “I liked living on the edge,” he says. “All those years that my house was in hock to the bank… I liked the...
Words: 1219 - Pages: 5
...Dyson Exchange Limited was founded in 1993 by James Dyson, an art school graduate who took a creative approach to solving problems. The sole shareholder in the entity, he now is worth over a staggering £1billion and the managing director of a business that took in £1.5billon turnover in 2012 as reported by the BBC (anon. 2012). However, it has been far from simple for Dyson to survive in the competitive market of household and business appliances, shown through Porter’s framework. Two of the greatest issues that face the company is the threat of substitution and competition, shown in the table on p.117 in Exploring Strategy: Text and Cases . One of Dyson’s best selling products, the vacuum, has many competitors such as Hoover, manufactured by Floor Care Technology Limited, Electrolux and Miele. The cheapest standing-up vacuum available from Dyson comes in at a hefty £299.99 in comparison to Hoover’s £59.99 Discovery Upright Vacuum Cleaner, hence, especially in a collapsed economy, people will be more inclined to purchase something more inexpensive in the competitive market. Dyson has been criticised for the high prices of their bladeless fans which have been sold for a starting price of $300, in comparison to a standard fan found in stores, which start at £10. Hence, there is high buyer power due to the low, competitive prices of other brands . Although, in recent years, Dyson have attempted to make themselves more competitive with their prices, by producing parts...
Words: 525 - Pages: 3
