From Forbes:
Inside Billionaire James Dyson's Reinvention Factory: From Vacuums To Hair Dryers And Now Batteries
DRESSED IN A BLUE POLKA-DOT OXFORD AND STRIPED REEBOK SNEAKERS, James Dyson abruptly veers off a paved path that cuts through his company’s 56-acre compound. The beanpole-thin 69-year-old billionaire pushes his way into some shrubbery and presses his nose right up to the reflective glass that encases his new, top-secret laboratory, a sleek two-story cube that looks like it was beamed directly from Santa Clara to the Cotswolds. To his delight, he can’t make out what his engineers are doing inside. “I hope they are working,” he says, chuckling.
In reality, it’s move-in day at this brand-new $200-million-plus research facility, and on the other side of the glass dozens of young engineers are unpacking their gear and settling into their quarters. Their job at D9, as the building is cryptically known, is to experiment fearlessly, fail constantly and document those failures in company-issued black-and-yellow notebooks, which form the basis for still more experiments, still more failures–and also a corporate sideline in patent litigation. Very rarely this unending cycle of failure results in a revolutionary new product: the bagless vacuum cleaner (5 years, 5,127 prototypes), the 360 Eye robot (17 years, 1,000-plus prototypes) and the Supersonic hair dryer (4 years, 600 prototypes). But those successes add up: Dyson’s 58 products generated $2.4 billion in sales last year and an estimated $340 million in net profits, even after Dyson reinvested 46% of the company’s Ebitda in R&D, more than rivals such as Electrolux and Techtronic. Dyson owns 100% of the company, which is worth some $4.8 billion.
I bought a small Dyson hand-held and was blown away by the quality and performance. When our big vaccuum died, I bit the bullet at Costco and spent the $600 for the top Dyson unit with the idea that I could always return it if performance wasn't acceptable. Performance was amazing - I like a clean house but the new Dyson was picking tons of crap out of my supposedly clean carpet.
What is James looking into with this new R&D building?
But Dyson’s biggest bet is on batteries. In his view the current rechargeable lithium-ion (li-ion) batteries that power most of the world’s gadgets (including his own) don’t hold a charge long enough and need to be safer (they occasionally catch fire). True to his nature, rather than incrementally improve existing li-ion technology Dyson is forging a new path: experimenting with solid-state li-ion batteries that use ceramics. To this end Dyson made the first acquisition in the company’s history in October 2015, spending $90 million for Sakti3, a battery startup in Ann Arbor, Mich. And that’s just the beginning. Dyson vows to spend $1.4 billion building a battery factory and investing in R&D over the next five years, a huge gamble for a company its size. But Dyson is undeterred, claiming that soon it will be making the world’s longest-lasting, most reliable batteries, taking dead aim at the global li-ion battery market, which research firm Lux estimates at $40 billion. “Batteries are quite exciting and sexy things,” Dyson says.
A fun three-page read. Great insight into how Dyson thinks.
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