Inside Dyson’s innovation machine

When Homer Simpson, America’s beloved cartoon idiot, was given free rein to design the car of his dreams, he created an abomination, complete with a megaphone attached to the roof and huge bubble-shaped windows. It tanked his brother’s car company.

When Dyson, Britain’s beloved technology company best known for its high-end vacuum cleaners and fans, gave its design engineers free rein to design the vacuum cleaner of their dreams, they created a cordless sucker with the power of a traditional vacuum and the mobility of a handheld.

Like “The Homer,” it looked ridiculous. The body resembled a children’s Nerf gun. The power button was a trigger. Unlike the fictional “Simpsons” car, it quickly became a best-seller.

Today, it accounts for 50 percent of what Dyson sells. The company took in nearly $2.1 billion in revenue last year, nearly half a billion dollars of which was profit.

The difference between “The Homer” and the Dyson? “The Homer” was a Frankenstein of unnecessary features, including three horns (“You can never find a horn when you’re mad!”). The Dyson was the product of engineers using their freedom to solve real problems. And the Nerf gun? The trigger? The bizarre, unconventional vacuum-cleaner design? Yeah, that was all part of the solution.

“The first thing we do at Dyson is identify a problem to solve,” said the company’s head of new product innovation, Stephen Courtney, who has been with the company for 17 years. “The second stage is working out what technologies can solve that problem. That’s why our products look so different. It’s because of the technology.”

In traditional cordless vacuum cleaners, the bulk of the machine is close to the ground, Courtney said. This makes it hard to maneuver because people are essentially pushing around a vacuum cleaner on the end of a long stick. So why not balance the weight of the machine in the person’s hand instead?

Thanks to more than a decade of research and development, Dyson already had developed a powerful motor small enough to fit into the palm of a hand. So instead of copying everyone else’s glorified broomstick design, why not build something that’s easier and more comfortable to use, even if it means adopting an unconventional Nerf gun form?

Chief Executive Max Conze describes Dyson as a company of problem-solvers. It employs 2,500 people in its U.K. headquarters and has more than 2,000 engineers around the world from all disciplines developing technology that can solve everyday frustrations. The company spends more than $4.5 million a week on research and development and, using those funds, its engineers break down every problem to its simplest form.

“Eighty percent of the things we work on won’t ever see the light of day,” Kelly said.

Is it a risk to throw hundreds of engineers on projects that might fail? Of course. Dyson has had no shortage of failures.

Before Oculus and Google Cardboard, Dyson developed a head-mounted wearable computer in 2001. According to Conze, it was too far ahead of its time, and the components available weren’t good enough to pull it off. It was put on indefinite hold.

Before the 2015 Dyson 360 Eye vacuum robot, the company developed a larger, clunkier, bright yellow robot vacuum cleaner in 2006. It almost launched, but the company decided it wasn’t powerful enough.

In the early 2000s it even tried a corded robot vacuum cleaner. The robot was smart enough to retrace its steps and wind up the cord on its own. Unfortunately, no one else was smart enough to avoid tripping over the cord.

Costly as the failures have been, it’s part of the process, Kelly said, and it’s a process that has led to vacuum cleaners, hand dryers, humidifiers and fans making Amazon’s and Walmart’s best-seller lists, despite the devices being much more expensive than competitors’. The latest Dyson cordless vacuum cleaner starts at $599, whereas the average competitor cordless vacuum starts at $100.

“If you want to design something, and if you can see a way of doing it, the attitude is never, ‘Ah, that will never work,” Kelly said. “It’s much more, ‘OK, then prove it. Make it. Demonstrate what you want to do.’”

This story was originally published December 9, 2015 at 11:04 AM with the headline "Inside Dyson’s innovation machine."