What Dyson says he learned from losing his first company, as rules for protecting an invention.
James Dyson's framework, from Invention, pp. 63 to 79.
Hold the patent
Keep the patent yourself and license it to the company instead of assigning it.
Avoid shareholders
Keep control of the company so decisions stay your own.
Value what you create
Do not undervalue the invention, and charge enough for it.
Do not sell against a utility product
Avoid competing on price against a cheap traditional product with no new expense.
Fix distribution
Avoid selling one product to many individual outlets through a wholesaler, which leaves no margin.
From chapter: Chapter Four: The Ballbarrow, pp. 63–79
Set against 1970s Britain of strikes, recession and 24 percent interest rates, Dyson builds the Ballbarrow, a wheelbarrow with a plastic ball instead of a wheel, in a cart barn at home funded by a guaranteed overdraft. He learns distribution, publicity, rotational moulding and powder coating, and discovers cyclonic separation at a timber merchant. The company wins half the UK market but makes no money, and in 1979 his fellow shareholders remove him. He had assigned the patent to the company, and he draws hard lessons about control, ownership and pricing.
