James Dyson: How To Be Different #2

Break the rules

Wednesday 23 November 2005 01:00 GMT
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Success in business is about breaking rules, not inventing them. Traditional thinking may be safe, but it won't give you a leap in performance.

And it may not even be safe, because the future arrives quicker these days. To the business bureaucrat that is a cause for worry. But to the entrepreneurial rule-breaker, it is what makes business exciting.

Great ideas emerge in response to new circumstances, or because you are dissatisfied and want to see if you can do better.

But, if you hope to be a creative rule-breaker, you will have to learn to live with opposition. The more original your idea, the more resistance you will meet. That is Dyson's First Law of Invention. Because an idea is new, it is easy for someone to miss its importance or to catalogue the reasons why it could fail.

Rivals, and sometimes even colleagues, will want to kill your idea or discredit your thinking. You can understand why.

Internally, there may be other priorities. The potential of your idea may not be clear. The reason you were able to come up with it in the first place was that you could see something that others couldn't.

Or people may hanker after a quiet life, going according to the rule book. They can't see beyond what is on sale.

Or the idea might be wrong. If it is, don't worry - some of the best ideas come from mistakes. Try again. Be stubborn. Keep doing what you believe in.

When your idea takes off enjoy the moment, but don't grow complacent. Keep leaping ahead. Break more rules. Then you can achieve new things far beyond your imagination.

Is it worth the trouble? Of course. Nothing beats the thrill of invention.

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