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#200 James Dyson (Against the Odds)

What I learned from rereading Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson and reading A History of Great Inventions by James Dyson.
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• I am a creator of products, a builder of things, and my name appears love on them. That is how I make a living and they are what have made nom my name at least familiar in a million homes.
• This is also the exposition of a business philosophy, which is very different from anything you might have encountered before.
• It has all happened, I really believe, because of the intrinsic excellence of the machine; because it is a better vacuum cleaner than anything that has gone before; and because it looks better than anything like it has ever looked.
• Perhaps millions of people, in the last few thousand years, have had ideas for improving it. All I did was take things a little further than just having the idea.
• My own success has been in observing objects in daily use which, it was always assumed, could not be improved.
• Anyone can become an expert in anything in six months, whether it is hydrodynamics for boats or cyclonic systems for vacuum cleaners. After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology. My first cyclonic vacuum cleaner was built out of cereal packets and masking tape long before I understood how it worked.
• The best kind of business is one where you can sell a product at a high price with a good margin, and in enormous volumes. For that you have to develop a product that works better and looks better than  existing ones. That type of investment is long term and high risk. Or at least, it looks like a high-risk policy. In the longer view, it is not half so likely to prove hazardous to one's financial health as simply following the herd.
• Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because it must be better. From the moment the idea strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control.
• This is not even a business book. It is, if anything, a book against business, against the principles that have filled the world with ugly, useless objects, unhappy people, and brought the country to its economic knees. We all want to make our mark. We all want to make beautiful things and a little money. We all have our own ideas about how to do it. What follows just happens to be my way.
• I have been a misfit throughout my professional life, and that seems to have worked to my advantage. Misfits are not born or made; they make themselves.
• I took on the big boys at their own game, made them look very silly, just by being true to myself.
• Herb Elliot was a big name at the time, so I read a few books about him and discovered that his coach had told him that the way to develop stamina and strengthen the leg muscles was to run up and down sand dunes. This suited me fine, because if I had nothing else I certainly had sand dunes. Out there alone on the dunes I got a terrific buzz from knowing that I was doing something that no on one else was - they were all tucked up in bed at school. I knew that I was training myself to do something better than anyone else would be able to do.
• The act of running itself was not something I enjoyed. The best you could say for it was that it was lonely and painful. But as I started to win by greater and greater margins I did it more and more, because I knew the reason for my success was that out on the sand dunes I was doing something that no one else was doing. Apart from me and Herb, no one knew. They were all running round and round the track like a herd of sheep and not getting any quicker. Difference itself was bon making me come first.
• In so many ways it taught m