Engineering-Design Unity

"Engineering and design are not viewed as separate. Designers are as involved in testing as engineers are in conceptual ideas Elsewhere in industry, designers just design the look of the product, and maybe sketch the odd part. Then engineers design the mechanics of the product. Test engineers do the testing. And model makers make the models. And machinists machine things. At Dyson, uniquely, we see no barriers between these disciplines - everyone in the department does everything. This way, everybody understands the implications of what they are doing, and enjoys total creative freedom. And it goes further."

"Upstairs, which was the office, we designed every detail on com- puter, and downstairs in the 'factory', we made our models. It was a fantastic environment to work in, for it was just engineers and design- ers, and no one to mess us around. There were no salesmen, no advertising people, no marketing managers, to interfere and try to guide us in their direction. We had nothing to do but deduce our own dream product. There was no market research and there were no focus groups; it was, to be frank, a designer's wet dream. It was unique. The world just isn't like that. You were not supposed to do things like that, just go ahead and do it all on your own, and then order a million pounds' worth of tooling. It felt almost naughty. People just didn't know what we were up to, and we occasionally found a severe cred- ibility problem, if no credit problem, such that when it came to buying tooling, or anything at all, we were expected to pay cash up front, to alleviate the worries of more conventional businessmen."

"... Who is it that gets neglected? The inventor, that's who. The designer, the engineer, the chemist, the brewer, the boffin. The people obsessed by the product; who will willingly accept that the sizzle is important, but who get their kicks trying to make an even better steak. Car companies used to be run by people who loved cars. They knew how to make cars themselves, and were always trying to make them better. Retail companies used to be run by people who loved shops, and a hundred and something years ago, George Safford Parker was nutty about fountain pens. As businesses got bigger and more complex, these obsessive, impractical, product-driven enthusiasts couldn't cope. They had to be helped by money men and lawyers and marketing persons with advertisement agents."