Invention

Reviews

'I left [this book] enlightened about engineering and design, and impressed by Dyson's dogged, trailblazing spirit.' ‘The ferociously creative entrepreneur who emerges in these pages revels in practical experiment and learns from failure… Dyson’s struggles against the advice of experts and in the teeth of endless commercial and technical challenges haven’t lost their power to fascinate… Those who persist with Invention despite its flaws will be rewarded.’ 'Stories of consumer products and gadgets drive Mr Dyson's narrative forward, but parallel...[he] tells a story of the struggles of entrepreneurship. A final thread...is his passionate case for more and better engineering and science education in British schools' ‘An entertaining and inspiring memoir by a fellow who’s nearly impossible to pigeonhole – and good thing, too . . . The British inventor and vacuum-cleaner magnate delivers a paean to creativity and creation . . . His overarching point is very well taken: He makes a powerful argument that our educational systems are not giving sufficient attention to fostering creativity and the independent spirit required of the inventor, thereby stifling innovation’  ‘[Dyson’s] written a book called Invention, but that’s the publisher’s title. He wanted to call it Failure because what we’ve all forgotten in our modern-day blame culture is that no achievement is possible without foul-ups. Every successful invention is the result of trial and error, with the emphasis on error . . . the central message in his book is that there are no shortcuts to success’ ‘This is not a book about business, but rather education, mentorship, and self-reliance. Invention: A Life celebrates the unknown and encourages stepping into it and uncovering entrepreneurism’
  ‘Dyson, like other great entrepreneurs, finds joy in failing because each experiment teaches him something he can use to reinvent a product or category. In fact, the words ‘failure’ and ‘fail’ appear over 50 times throughout Dyson's book . . . Dyson's famous 5,126 failures offer valuable lessons in storytelling for all entrepreneurs and business owners’ ‘In his book Invention: A Life, Dyson, explains not just how he built his empire but how his life is as much about failure as it is about success – and why that makes him happy’
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