Innovation: vacuum cleaners, washing machines and wheel barrows

I used to repair Zanussi washing machines and my dad used to be a door-to-door salesman for Hoover in the 1960s. It was no surprise, then, that I really enjoyed James Dyson's talk on the MIT World Web site. James Dyson is the founder of Dyson, a company that developed, and successfully sold, the bagless vacuum cleaner.

Here are some excerpts from James Dyson's talk:

Advertising

"Unfortunately, you do have to do advertising. . . . I've never invested in advertising . . . I've always let people buy the product, see it, and then as they buy it, the sales of the product pay for more advertising."

Focus Groups

"We do do focus groups. ... they'll give you their opinion but they won't tell you the future. You have to guess at that, thank goodness .. . letters of complaint, I read all of those . . it's gold dust."

Creativity

"It's entirely the way you behave . . . it's your everyday reaction to ideas, not being cynical . . . usually, the silly suggestion is the best suggestion of the year . . . wrong thinking is the best way to start . .. It can set you off on a different path, and eventually you come to a solution that no one else would have thought of, because they are all thinking 'correctly.'"

You can watch the talk HERE.