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The bookcase

One of the books Shaun rated five out of five.

Dyson Against the Odds

James Dyson

  • 5/5
  • Finished 2025
  • Memoir
  • A conumser can barely handle one great new idea, let alone two or more
  • To try to sell a half-finished product is to doom from the start any project
  • Selling; is seeing how product will fit into life of customer, not about showing off how great it was
  • Patent/IP - put this in your own name, not the companies
  • Legalese - use lawyer in local US state, instead of New York
  • Licensing - has to be a significant upfront sum with a minimum fee/year, to have a trigger date, so it can’t run forever + ever without you getting pai
  • Design - start in the middle, no outlines. Should present the impression of its own effectiveness. Design is integrating new tech to improve function
  • Ad agency - deal with the creative directly, or not at all
    • don’t sell more than one message at a time, or you lose belief
    • solve a problem that all other systems suffered from
  • Everyone at Dyson makes a vaccuum cleaner on their 1st day, can pay £20 to keep it
  • Even office is ultra high end design/quality, graphics/engineers are in the center
  • Engineers/designers are not separate
  • No memos, no emails
  • Anti-brilliant. Be unconventional. Be Obtuse. Be Illogical. Shake Things up.