Inventor James Dyson has talked about the importance of embracing “failure” in work and life.
“I’ve always said mine is a life of failure,” the British billionaire told The Wall Street Journal in an interview.
He’s created thousands of prototypes over his career and also scrapped plans to enter the EV market.
Inventor James Dyson is famous for his namesake vacuums which use his patented cyclone technology. His net worth is $16.8 billion per Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
But he says that, “mine is a life of failure.”
In a video interview with The Wall Street Journal published Saturday, Dyson — who said he created 5,127 prototypes over five years before launching his bagless vacuum cleaner in 1993 — said that embracing failure was essential to life.
“It’s true for writers and filmmakers and all sorts of people. It’s a life of failure. It takes a long time before you find the one that works,” he said. “You just have to get used to that.”
Dyson, 77, said he enjoyed the misfires and struggles he’s had across his career, saying that real wisdom comes from experience.
“At school, you’re taught to get the answer right the first time,” he said. While a clever student may get to the answer quickly, he said, they are at a disadvantage to those who take their time getting to an answer, as they haven’t “viscerally experienced failure and overcoming failure.”
For Dyson, resilience and adaptability are some of the most important skills someone can learn. “Life is about making things work,” he said.
He continued: “That’s what you have to do. It’s trial and error. When something works, it’s less challenging, it’s less interesting.”
Aside from the many prototypes it took him to invent the first vacuum with his namesake brand, Dyson famously abandoned plans to enter the electric car market in 2019 after spending more than $600 million on developing a vehicle that he came to realize was not commercially viable.
“The route to success is never linear. This is not the first project which has changed direction and it will not be the last,” he wrote in a letter announcing the decision.
He said of his scrapped EV vehicle, “I could see that it was just too risky.”
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