Dyson's Theorem Destruction + Idea (Experiment + Adventure) = Manufacturing from "WIRED" VOL. 3

James Dyson. At the electromagnetic compatibility test room at Dyson headquarters.

Don't call Sir James Dyson a businessman. Icon-breaking home appliances like bagless vacuum cleaners and bladeless fans brought in around £260m in 2010 alone. Over the past three decades, he has gone from being an artist dependent on his wife's income to a wealthy man with an estimated personal fortune of £1.45 billion. Still, Dyson doesn't back down. "I'm not a businessman," he insists. “I am a designer and an engineer.”

Dyson's headquarters are located on the outskirts of Malmesbury, a town in Wiltshire in the southwest of England. Malmesbury is a city with ruins that date back to pre-Roman times. Box-shaped buildings line up near the head office. Surrounded by four soccer fields, the undulating roof echoes the nearby Cotswold hills. Most of the façade is clad in clear glass, but the ground floor, where the engineers Dyson spends most of his day, is hidden from view by mirrored panels.

One afternoon in early July under a leaden sky. In his spacious upstairs office, Dyson, with his 64-year-old toned body and flowing silver hair, sat in a high-backed Eames chair. His office is on the north side of the building, separated by a transparent partition. A square table made of Carrera marble is installed, and when you look at the wall, you can see a long metal shelf extending to the far corner. The shelf holds a number of design collections with bookmarks here and there.

The next wall is lined with Dyson's inventions. The familiar "dual cyclone" with suction power, the hand dryer "airblade" with excellent quick drying, and the "air multiplier fan" without buffeting. Now, a companion called a portable fan heater has joined the group of works. It's three years of extraordinary engineering woes. Its name is "Dyson Hot".

Dyson hopes his fan heater will make all traditional portable fan heaters a thing of the past. Dyson's way is to reinvent and rethink the mundane. He believes that standard everyday items are flawed in a design sense. That approach is now popularly known as "Doing a Dyson." "People keep trying to make only what's on the market right now, and that's all you can actually buy." Dyson speaks in soft Queen's English. "But that's not the way I like to do it." The strategic advantage is that Dyson's market is already established, and he can develop from the user's point of view.

Dyson's theorem