Invention

A Life

Preview

Failed to add items

Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.

Add to basket failed.

Please try again later

Add to wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Remove from wishlist failed.

Please try again later

Adding to library failed

Please try again

Follow podcast failed

Unfollow podcast failed

Try Premium Plus free

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.

Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts

Access exclusive sales and deals.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Invention

By: James Dyson

Narrated by: James Dyson

Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

About this listen

Dyson has become a byword for great design, brilliant invention and global success. Now, James Dyson, the entrepreneur who made it all happen, tells his remarkable and inspirational story in Invention: A Life of Learning through Failure.

'By continually challenging ourselves, investing in the future and experimenting, we can continue to make the future. We must never stop. Never, for one second become comfortable.' James Dyson

In this spirited autobiography, James Dyson interweaves his own life story with a wider exploration of the importance of invention. On the way, the reader encounters challenging and inspirational characters, radical inventions, adventurous engineering, cultural fads, political gamesmanship, legal battles and much else besides.

Invention: A Life of Learning through Failure is a 21st century call to arms: creative invention through the research, design and manufacture of technologies and products empowers not only employees and employers, but the economy at large, while the very acts of imagining, shaping and making things enriches our lives. James Dyson sees people as producers as well as consumers, the inventing and making of things part of a natural instinct. Invention is a lifelong commitment. It has been James Dyson’s life.

James DysonJames DysonSimon & Schuster Audio UK

Business

History & Culture

Innovations

Professionals & Academics

Technology

Inspiring

Thought-Provoking

Business History & Culture Innovations Professionals & Academics Technology Inspiring Thought-Provoking

Critic reviews

'I left [this book] enlightened about engineering and design, and impressed by Dyson's dogged, trailblazing spirit.' (Oliver Shah)

‘The ferociously creative entrepreneur who emerges in these pages revels in practical experiment and learns from failure… Dyson’s struggles against the advice of experts and in the teeth of endless commercial and technical challenges haven’t lost their power to fascinate… Those who persist with Invention despite its flaws will be rewarded.’ (Marc Sidwell)

'Stories of consumer products and gadgets drive Mr Dyson's narrative forward, but parallel...[he] tells a story of the struggles of entrepreneurship. A final thread...is his passionate case for more and better engineering and science education in British schools' (Henry Petroski)

‘An entertaining and inspiring memoir by a fellow who’s nearly impossible to pigeonhole – and good thing, too . . . The British inventor and vacuum-cleaner magnate delivers a paean to creativity and creation . . . His overarching point is very well taken: He makes a powerful argument that our educational systems are not giving sufficient attention to fostering creativity and the independent spirit required of the inventor, thereby stifling innovation’

‘[Dyson’s] written a book called Invention, but that’s the publisher’s title. He wanted to call it Failure because what we’ve all forgotten in our modern-day blame culture is that no achievement is possible without foul-ups. Every successful invention is the result of trial and error, with the emphasis on error . . . the central message in his book is that there are no shortcuts to success’

‘This is not a book about business, but rather education, mentorship, and self-reliance. Invention: A Life celebrates the unknown and encourages stepping into it and uncovering entrepreneurism’

‘Dyson, like other great entrepreneurs, finds joy in failing because each experiment teaches him something he can use to reinvent a product or category. In fact, the words ‘failure’ and ‘fail’ appear over 50 times throughout Dyson's book . . . Dyson's famous 5,126 failures offer valuable lessons in storytelling for all entrepreneurs and business owners’

‘In his book Invention: A Life, Dyson, explains not just how he built his empire but how his life is as much about failure as it is about success – and why that makes him happy’

Most relevant

As a budding inventor and entrepreneur, I found this book really helpful and authentically inspiring. I think Mr Dyson mentions that he made 5127 prototypes about 5127 times, however he’s earned every right after the extreme levels of endurance and persistence that he achieved over his life. I have made a lot of prototypes and it’s a very difficult but very rewarding thing to do. I agree with him that far too many businesses are set up to exit and to get rich. It’s much more rewarding to think long term and create a create mission that people can rally around and join.