Building a Better Mousetrap
Vacuum innovator James Dyson unveils Canadian design competition

BY STUART FOXMAN

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. That maxim has inspired countless inventors. Sir James Dyson would alter it slightly. You also have to beat on your share of doors to get your innovation noticed. “Commercialization,” he says, “isn’t easy.”

Now Dyson, the man behind one of the world’s best-selling vacuums, is helping would-be Canadian inventors bring their ideas for new products to a bigger stage with the launch of the Dyson Canada Design Competition.

The Dyson Canada Design Competition is open to teams and individuals who are full-time students or who have graduated within the past year from a CEGEP, college or university. The deadline for submissions is Nov. 15, 2007; applications and information are available at www.dyson.com. The winner will receive $5,000, a Dyson vacuum, and entry into the international James Dyson Design Award.

“My hope is that the competition will encourage young Canadian designers to think differently about how to find innovative solutions to everyday problems,” says Dyson.

That’s what Dyson did. One day in 1978 he became frustrated while vacuuming his home in central England. The vacuum bag would frequently get clogged and the machine would lose suction. Instead of buying a new vacuum, Dyson—a designer by training—set out to build a better machine.

He got the idea of using high centrifugal force, which would mean no bag. Dyson knew it would work, though it took five years and over 5,000 prototypes until he had a satisfactory working model. When the big vacuum makers turned down his design, Dyson decided to go it alone. Today, the Dyson vacuum, sold in 44 countries, is a top-selling brand in the U.K., Australia, Japan, the United States and Canada.

With this design competition, Dyson is looking for entries that reflect the company’s philosophy of complete design – the product has to work well, solve a problem, provide a real advantage over existing offerings, and look good. Anything goes, too. In previous Dyson design competitions in the U.K., Asia, Europe and the USA, entries have ranged from an interactive guidance device for the blind to a bicycle that converts into a shopping cart to a slip-on iron in the shape of a hand.

Dyson hesitates to give advice to young inventors. He believes they must find their own way. He didn’t seek advice when he was revolutionizing vacuum design, and he tended to reject it when it was offered.

“The more failure you have, the more you learn,” he says.

He does admire the pure creativity and inventiveness often shown by young children. “That lack of fear and lack of convention helps you so much.” And he’s a proponent of what he calls “wrong thinking” – the ability to view problems and solutions in completely fresh and sometimes counterintuitive ways.

“Students learn so much by rote,” says Dyson. “The ‘right answer’ ends up not being very creative, because everybody is embracing the same way of thinking. Thinking the wrong way may not give you the immediate answer – but it sets you down a different path.”