With Dyson founder, James Dyson, as his father, there’s no disputing that design is in Jake Dyson’s DNA. After studying Product Design at London’s Central Saint Martins, Jake founded and ran Jake Dyson Light, his own cutting-edge lighting business based in Clerkenwell, London, which was later acquired by Dyson. Now working with his father as Dyson’s Chief Engineer, Jake’s days are busy and varied, as we find out in this interview…
Growing up with James Dyson as my dad was cool.
He’d wear one pink sock and one yellow sock when he’d pick me up – he had quite a quirky fashion sense. There was something different about him and I’m so proud about that. He loved design and so did my mother, so the interiors of our homes were quite creative and cool as well. I think being surrounded by that makes you aspire to the same things and understand a certain language.
I saw some pretty bonkers things growing up.
His ideas ranged from potato peelers to amphibious vehicles. He built his own vacuum forming machine down in the cellar to try to produce the perfect perspex cones. That machine was really dangerous – high wattage and voltage, and it gave off a lot of heat – but they cost so much money to buy in those days that he built his own. Of course, it took him months to get this perfect cone. I also remember him working on a wheelchair that climbed pavement curbs.
Not everything was plain sailing, though.
He was kicked out of his own company when he did the Ballbarrow. I remember going to that factory when I was about six, smelling all the soapy plastic, having a hot chocolate out of the Maxpax machine… but I also remember him absolutely emotionally devastated when he came back one morning and he’d been removed from his own company. What was really special was seeing how he picked himself up the next day and started mucking about with cardboard to improve vacuum cleaners. He’d learned a big lesson as well: don’t involve anyone else, just do it on your own.
Maybe design is in my DNA.
In terms of me following the same sort of profession, it’s one of the two or three things I’m very good at. I was not academic at all at school but I loved art, design and making things. Maybe it just follows in the genes. It was the only thing I worked really hard at. I think that also translated to when I started my own business, developing technologies and making lights – I was self-driven to improve those products and to realise something. It’s just that wonderful feeling of achievement, that you’ve created that one thing you set out to do.
I was the chief engineer of the Dyson Spot+Scrub AI.
I recognised the need to be able to spot a stain. The trouble with all of these robots is that they just go over the dirt and spread it around the room, so it looks clean but it isn’t. We’ve done a lot of research into vision systems, not only for this type of robot but for others too, and we’ve developed the ability to spot where a stain is. Even with imperfections and knots in floorboards, for example, we can still say “That’s a stain”.
Dyson doesn’t take inspiration from any other company.
We are very inspired by space travel, aircraft, physical structures and nature – those are the elements that keep popping up in our research activity. And also chemistry: physics is obvious, as that’s how you solve an engineering principle, but we are quite interested in chemistry experimentation. There are things that inspire us, that make us look in certain directions to solve problems, but really it’s a combination of experimenting in new areas and also in existing areas to see how we can improve things.
My work weeks are busy and varied.
We’re working on multiple things at once. I spend a third, possibly 40% of my week with the creative teams, coming up with new campaigns for launches and commercials – a lot of the creative process. I will spend a lot of the mornings on calls with our engineers in Singapore – they’re closest to the manufacturing and the second cycle of product development. Here in the UK is very much the innovation part of the business, and the research, then the products are passed over to Asia to be developed and built. I’ll spend about half a day a week on strategic executive meetings. It’s very broad.
I travel extensively.
I go to Singapore one week a month, eight months a year, plus America, Japan – I went to Silicon Valley just last week, so there is a lot of travel. Of course, we launch products as well – Dad and I will go to a country and launch in front of all the journalists. We are starting to do global launches now as the world is moving so fast – our competitors will copy us within three or four months, so we present launches globally, all at the same time, and we turn on all the creative campaigns at the same time. The organisation has changed over the last year to set itself up in that way.
I drive an electric car.
I’ve got a BMW i3, which I’ve had for probably seven years. I’ve also got a really nasty Japanese minibus that I think looks awful from the outside, but on the inside you just recline the seats and you’re asleep within 10 seconds. I have to drive about an hour every morning and every evening, so I have someone to help me drive – that way I can do emails and sleep on the way home from work.
Read more: Sir James Dyson on the pitfalls of stair-climbing robot vacs, what went wrong with Dyson Zone, pesky copycats and what keeps him up at night & Fred Howe, Dyson’s Senior Design Manager for haircare on breaking stuff, making stuff and having a ball down the farm
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