My top 10 highlights from Against the Odds by James Dyson
1. Difference for the sake of it. In everything. Because it must be better. From the moment the idea strikes, to the running of the business. Difference, and retention of total control.
2. Misfits are not born or made; they make themselves.
3. To this day it is the fear of failure, more than anything else, which makes me keep working at success.
4. He was fired by an inner strength and self-belief almost impossible to imagine in this feckless age.
5. He was never afraid to be different or shocking.
6. This is the vision of a single man, pursued with dogged determination, that was nothing less than obsession.
7. I would not to be dragged into something I didn't want to do.
8. I have sought out originality for its own sake, and modified it into a philosophy which demands difference from what exists.
9. The root principle was to do things your way.
10. Magic — the unique way a product does what it does — is never to be underestimated.
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My top 10 highlights from Invention: A Life of Learning Through Failure by James Dyson
1. Don't copy the opposition. Don't worry about market research. Follow your own star. This is what successful entrepreneurs do.
2. Experts tend to be confident that they have all the answers and, because of this trait, they can kill new ideas.
3. Stamina and determination, with creativity, are needed to overcome seemingly impossible difficulties.
4. Selling goes with manufacturing as wheels do with a bicycle.
5. Remember that there is nothing wrong with being persistently dissatisfied or even afraid.
6. Invention is a human imperative.
7. You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete
8. I had various degrees of perseverance underpinned by a kind of naïve intelligence, by which I mean following your own star along a path where you stop to question both yourself and expert opinion along the way.
9. Believe, most of all, in the power of enthusiasm.
10. For the following fifteen years I lived in debt. This might not sound encouraging to young inventors with an entrepreneurial spirit, yet if you believe you can achieve something then you have to give the project 100 percent of your creative energy. You have to believe that you'll get there in the end.
Listen to #400 The Stubborn Genius of James Dyson on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
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