
Invention
A Life of Learning Through Failure
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Narrated by:
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James Dyson
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By:
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James Dyson
About this listen
Dyson has become a byword for high-performing products, technology, design, and invention. Now, James Dyson, the inventor and entrepreneur who made it all happen, tells his remarkable and inspirational story in Invention: A Life, "one of the year's most relevant and revelatory business books" (The Wall Street Journal).
Famously, over a four-year period, James Dyson made 5,127 prototypes of the cyclonic vacuum cleaner that would transform the way houses are cleaned around the world. In devoting all his resources to iteratively developing the technology, he risked it all, but out of many failures and setbacks came hard-fought success. His products - including vacuum cleaners, hair dryers and hair stylers, and fans and purifiers - are not only revolutionary technologies, but design classics. This was a legacy of his time studying at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s, when he was inspired by some of the most famous artists, designers, and inventors of the era, as well as his engineering heroes such as Frank Whittle and Alex Issigonis.
In Invention: A Life, Dyson reveals how he came to set up his own company and led it to become one of the most inventive technology companies in the world. It is a compelling and dramatic tale, with many obstacles overcome. Dyson has always looked to the future, even setting up his own university to help provide the next generation of engineers and designers. For, as he says, “everything changes all the time, so experience is of little use”.
Whether you are someone who has an idea for a better product, an aspiring entrepreneur, whether you appreciate great design or a pause-resisting story, Invention: A Life offers you inspiration, hope, and much more.
©2021 James Dyson. All rights reserved. Originally published in Great Britain in 2021 by Simon & Schuster UK. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.Listeners also enjoyed...
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The Everything Store
- Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
- By: Brad Stone
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 13 hrs
- Unabridged
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Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now.
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Did you know how bad it is to work for Amazon?
- By Shamu from New York on 12-07-13
By: Brad Stone
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The Whole Story
- Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism
- By: John Mackey
- Narrated by: Adam Barr, John Mackey
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Whole Foods Market's cofounder and CEO for forty-four years, John Mackey offers an intimate and provocative account of the rise of this iconic company and the personal and spiritual journey that inspired its remarkable impact.
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Entertaining, informative, interesting, well written and performed
- By Steven on 05-27-25
By: John Mackey
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The Founders
- The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley
- By: Jimmy Soni
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 18 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Today, PayPal’s founders and earliest employees are considered the technology industry’s most powerful network. Since leaving PayPal, they have formed, funded, and advised the leading companies of our era, including Tesla, Facebook, YouTube, SpaceX, Yelp, Palantir, and LinkedIn, among many others. As a group, they have driven 21st-century innovation and entrepreneurship. Their names stir passions; they’re as controversial as they are admired.
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Wonderful, Engaging & Insightful
- By Ismael Becerra on 02-26-22
By: Jimmy Soni
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Inventor Confidential
- The Honest Guide to Profitable Inventing
- By: Warren Tuttle, Jeffrey A. Mangus
- Narrated by: Warren Tuttle
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The road to licensing a profitable, innovative product or technology is riddled with curves, holes, and rocky cliffs. The President of the United Inventors Association shows inventors, innovators, and makers a better path toward monetizing your creations and how to avoid the get-rich-quick scammers. Inventor Confidential will show them where to best spend their hard-earned money to maximize their odds for success.
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This book is everything for an inventor!
- By Mike James on 07-13-21
By: Warren Tuttle, and others
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How Innovation Works
- And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: Matt Ridley
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. Forget short-term symptoms like Donald Trump and Brexit, it is innovation itself that explains them and that will itself shape the 21st century for good and ill. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen, hard to summon into existence to order, yet inevitable and inexorable when it does happen.
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Bad scholarship and bias that overwhelms his facts
- By RickyF on 07-01-20
By: Matt Ridley
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The Company I Keep
- My Life in Beauty
- By: Leonard A. Lauder
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In his much-anticipated memoir, The Company I Keep: My Life in Beauty, Chairman Emeritus and former CEO of The Estée Lauder Companies Leonard A. Lauder shares the business and life lessons he learned as well as the adventures he had while helping transform the mom-and-pop business his mother founded in 1946 in the family kitchen into the beloved brand and ultimately into the iconic global prestige beauty company it is today.
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Enchanting & motivational
- By MB on 11-23-20
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The LEGO Story
- How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination
- By: Jens Andersen
- Narrated by: Peter Cross
- Length: 11 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s estimated that each year between eighty and ninety million children around the globe are given a box of LEGO, while up to ten million adults buy sets for themselves. Yet LEGO is much more than a dizzying number of plastic bricks that can be put together and combined in countless ways. LEGO is also a vision of the significance of what play can mean for humanity.
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not very interesting
- By chris p on 09-25-24
By: Jens Andersen
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Grinding It Out
- The Making of McDonald's
- By: Ray Kroc, Robert Anderson
- Narrated by: Stephen Bel Davies
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Few entrepreneurs can claim to have radically changed the way we live, and Ray Kroc is one of them. His revolutions in food-service automation, franchising, shared national training, and advertising have earned him a place beside the men and women who have founded not only businesses, but entire empires. But even more interesting than Ray Kroc the business man is Ray Kroc the man. Not your typical self-made tycoon, Kroc was 52 years old when he opened his first franchise.
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great book annoying narration
- By Brandon on 12-20-18
By: Ray Kroc, and others
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Jony Ive
- The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products
- By: Leander Kahney
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The best-selling author of Inside Steve's Brain profiles Apple's legendary chief designer, Jonathan Ive. Jony Ive's designs have not only made Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world; they've overturned entire industries, from music and mobile phones to PCs and tablets.
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Was hoping to get to know the man behind the name.
- By Idan B. on 06-15-14
By: Leander Kahney
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Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A
- How Faith, Cows, and Chicken Built an Iconic Brand
- By: Steve Robinson
- Narrated by: Milton Bagby
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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During his 34-year tenure at Chick-fil-A, Steve Robinson was integrally involved in the company’s growth - from 184 stores and $100 million in annual sales in 1981 to over 2,100 stores and over $6.8 billion in annual sales in 2015 - and was a firsthand witness to its evolution as an indelible global brand. In Covert Cows and Chick-fil-A, Robinson shares behind-the-scenes accounts of key moments.
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Like an encyclopedia being read
- By Dave on 11-29-19
By: Steve Robinson
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How the Mighty Fall
- And Why Some Companies Never Give In
- By: Jim Collins
- Narrated by: Jim Collins
- Length: 4 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Decline can be avoided. Decline can be detected. Decline can be reversed. Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course?
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This is not Shakespeare
- By Amygay111 on 05-27-10
By: Jim Collins
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The Nvidia Way
- Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant
- By: Tae Kim
- Narrated by: Michael Braun
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Nvidia is the darling of the age of artificial intelligence: the company’s chips are powering the generative-AI revolution, and demand is insatiable. For all the current interest and attention, however, Nvidia is not of our time. Founded more than three decades ago in a Denny’s in East San Jose, for years it was known primarily in the then-niche world of computer gaming. In fact, the company’s leather-jacketed leader, Jensen Huang, is the longest-serving CEO in an industry marked by near constant turmoil and failure.
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Don’t Buy This Book Be Forewarned
- By Susan Hess on 12-25-24
By: Tae Kim
Inspiring!!
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One of the best founders stories I’ve ever read!
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Evolutionarily superb!
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Thank you god! For James Dyson
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Also illustrates the importance of daring mighty things, not being afraid of failure, and experimenting a lot.
Admirable and inspiring that Dyson is sharing his failures.
Always a plus that it's read by the author. Although it would've been strange if he had wanted it any other way.
Main and to my opinion only downside of the book is that Dyson is very fond of Claas combines, although I see it more as motivating. 🙂
Brilliant and inspiring
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great to hear from the inventor and founder himsel
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Great look into the Dyson story
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Inspiring!
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Inspiring
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Great story but painful to listen
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