THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE
WHEN I arrive, he’s busy tinkering in his shed. But this is no ordinary garden shed – as befits Britain’s best-known inventor, James Dyson has test rigs, hoists, machine tools and other paraphernalia set up in a giant aircraft hangar.
In fact, he bought the entire airfield in Wiltshire in southwest England to give him the space to assemble things and pull them apart.
James is cagey about what he’s working on. An electric bike? The world’s first silent leaf blower?
“Ah. Well, I’m not allowed to say,” he smiles apologetically.
Outside there are security guards and a high perimeter fence. Some of the buildings are so well camouflaged they’re invisible on Google Earth. Visitors are vetted and must put masking tape over the lenses of their smartphones before they may enter.
“We’ve got a lot of intellectual [property] actions going on all over the world, mostly in China,” James confides. “It’s a serious worry. We’re careful about security and we take a lot of precautions.”
James cleaned up after inventing a vacuum cleaner that sells in more than 80 countries. From a modest start in a makeshift factory in old pigsties, he built his engineering company into a behemoth with an annual turnover of more than £5 billion (R97,5bn).
When I finally clear all the checks to see him, he’s looking summery in deck shoes, navy slacks and an open-neck shirt, with an aura of old-school charm. He removes a pair of Harry Potter spectacles when we sit down to chat.
He was knighted, as the joke goes, for “services to vacuuming” but doesn’t want anyone sucking up and calling him Sir. “Just James,” he says affably.
What he
