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Dyson drops the ball

Date: 12/03/2010

I’ve just skimmed through Ingenious Britain, the report commissioned by the Conservatives from James Dyson. And surprise, surprise - it’s a huge disappointment.  

There is nothing at all in it about encouraging and supporting the efforts of individual inventors, designers and tiny, shoe-string technology start-ups. This is quite remarkable considering James Dyson’s own history. Given the huge respect he has earned and deserves, it would be churlish to accuse him of selling out, but he may have come uncomfortably close to it here.

Ingenious Britain reads more like something written by party hacks than by Britain’s foremost modern inventor. The list of acknowledgements at the back speaks volumes. There is a generous supply of industrialists, financiers, politicians, academics, and - kiss of death - NESTA, but no individual or body representative of inventors or small business start-ups.

The subtitle of Ingenious Britain is ‘Making the UK the leading high tech exporter in Europe’. This seems oddly unambitious. How about: ‘Making the UK a world-leading centre of invention and innovation’? Or perhaps, more realistically: ‘Making Britain reclaim all the ground it has let itself lose in invention and innovation’?

Overall, Ingenious Britain seems to be little more than the usual suspects trotting out platitudes about improving the UK’s performance in science and technology. It could have been so much better if it acknowledged that many successful new ideas, products, technologies and businesses start with individuals swimming, usually with extreme difficulty, against a tide of indifference and obstruction. Which is exactly what James Dyson did all those years ago.

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