Learning from Failure
Valerie Minatee
Concordia College
Leadership of Entrepreneurial/Innovative Business Organizations
BUS 534
Dr. Barrett Mincey
November 15, 2014

Abstract
The research in this paper is to discuss the failure and success of Sir James Dyson, a British native. James Dyson is a British industrialist whose claim to fame is the Dual Cyclone bagless vacuum cleaner. After numerous attempts and countless mistakes at perfecting one of the best selling vacuum cleaners sold today. Dyson’s invention helped revolutionize the vacuum cleaners along with other appliances in the world (famous-entrepreneurs 2013).

Learning from Failure
Dyson was born on May 2, 1947 in Cromer, England into a family of educators and clergymen. Along with his passion of engineering, he is a long distance runner. Dyson stated that he learned the quality of determination from it. He attended the Byam Shaw School of Art for a year after which he did courses in interior and furniture design from the Royal College of Art from 1966 to 1970. While he was there he got his first idea of using cyclonic separation in a vacuum cleaner so that it would not lose its suction quality as it picked up dirt. Dyson was very disappointed with his Hoover Junior that continuously got clogged up reducing its suction after every use.
In 1979, after Dyson purchased his first top of the line vacuum cleaner, he discovered it constantly clogged and lost suction, these inefficiencies caused his mind to work on ways to fix this issue. It was not until after Dyson made a visit to a sawmill and he noticed how a large air cyclone that was used to purposely channel the sawdust out of the air. Thinking like an engineer, Dyson goes home and dismantles his high-end vacuum cleaner and created the same concept as the cyclone used to draw the sawmill from the air, by placing a piece of cardboard in the area where you would attach a vacuum cleaner bag. After five years of creating over 5,000 prototypes, he finally launched the ‘G-Force’ cleaner in 1983. By this time he had already used half his life savings on his idea. The newly designed vacuum cleaner was designed with a pivoting inflated ball and a large flat foot for stability, all material made of durable plastic that wouldn’t cause damage to wall and furniture. Certain his invention was unique he was still suffer a great deal of disappointment, because no manufacturer or distributor was interested in his idea, they basically wanted to protect the lucrative bag market, that was worth $500m a year
Learning from Failure rldwide (Engineering & Technology, 2010). Therefore, he decided to launch his product in Japan.
In 1970, while studying at Royal College of Art, Dyson invented the Sea Truck, a flat hulled landing craft he developed along with a college, Jeremy Fry. Then in 1984, he engineered the first vacuum cleaner with no loss of suction, calling it the G-Force and the first product he made in Japan. The G-Force put Dyson on the map, building enough business from television infomercials he opened his first factory in the UK. Dyson decided in 1993 to launch the worlds first bagless vacuum cleaner, naming that one the DC01, two years later the DC02 was launched Australia, Belgium, Sweden and The Netherlands.
During an interview with an Entrepreneur journalist Nadia Goodman, who asked Dyson if he often talked about the value of failure and how it helped you? He response was, “failure is interesting, it is part of making progress. You never learn from success, but you do learn from failure” (Entrepreneur, 2012). After countless Dyson used his entrepreneurial mindset, to launch his innovative and very lucrative business, he used the bricolage approach. As Hisrich, Peters and Shepherd stated in the text, the bricolage approach involves taking existing resources and experimenting, tinkering, repackaging and or reframing them so they can be used in a way for which they were not originally designed or conceived (Hisrich, Peters, & Shepherd, 2013, p. 8). In this case, Dyson took a hoover vacuum cleaner and reconfigured they way it operated, causing his invention to become one of the most sort after cleaning appliances.
Today, Dyson is enjoying the wealth his inventions. His company has banked $600 million on $2 billion in revenues. The company credits its R&D investments: it increased its engineering headcount by 45% in 2012, with a focus on hiring recent graduates. About engineering, Dyson has been vocal: "I am concerned that we are sometimes distracted by the glamor of web fads and video gaming rather than the development of tangible technology that we can export," he said in January 2013. His foundation is devoted to bolstering engineering educations in the U.K. and U.S. His latest invention was unveiled, a hand-dryer/faucet combo in February 2013 (Forbes, 2014).

References:

Hisrich, R. D., Peters, M. P., & Shepherd, D. A. (2013). Entrepreneurship. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Altman, W. (September 11-24 2010) Dyson and the vacuum in development Retrieved November 15, 2014 www.theiet.org/magazine
Forbes James Dyson on Forbes list Retreived November 15, 2014http://www.forbes.com/profile/james-dyson/
http://www.famous-entrepreneurs.com/james-dyson