The Dyson Warning
I watched the Richard Dimbleby Lecture on good old BBC1 on Wednesday
8th December. Delivered in an informal but eloquent and sometimes
direct style by James Dyson, the inventor and entrepreneur who "mucked
about with a vacuum cleaner for ages" before coming up with a design
that literally blew away the competition, he made a strong case for the
return to design and innovation that puts function ahead of form.
Amazingly, he is the first engineer to deliver the lecture, but his
message to Britain was seriously and worryingly clear – we have to stop
resting on our laurels and leverage our know-how to invent, design and
make new products – products that make full use of today’s
technologies. Britain as a nation is falling behind in the know-how
stakes – especially when it comes to advanced products – products that
have substantial know-how engineered into them and which can be
successfully commercialised under the protection of patents or other
intellectual property rights. A telling statistic from a couple of
years ago puts the UK behind Luxembourg and just ahead of Monaco in the
number of patents awarded. I agree with James – we have to get better
at knowledge work – we have to make our knowledge work harder for us
and capitalise on our know-how potential before it leaks away taking
our wealth and influence with it. OK it won’t happen overnight but the
warning signs are all around us - it’s time to drop our golden
industrial age mentality and embrace the knowledge economy.
Think about it...
Percentage of turnover invested in R&D by Dyson - 12%
Percentage of turnover invested in R&D (Global average) - 4.3%
Percentage of turnover invested in R&D (UK) - 2.1%
ExLink: Full Text of Lecture
