Sunday, February 15, 2009

5,127 attempts down the road

While listening to Tom Kelley of IDEO on one of the podcast by Stanford University's Entrepreneurship Corner I was struck by a couple of great examples of not giving up easily.

1. Rocket Chemical Company and its staff of three that attempted to get water displacing formula worked out. Have you ever wondered what the name of widely used water-displacing spray WD-40 stands for? Well, WD is water displacement, but the 40 stands for 40th formula. We are talking about 39 formulas that failed...

2. James Dyson, self-made billionaires, is well known as the inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner. What very few people know is how many attempts he made until he perfected the Dual Cyclone vacuum. In his book Against the Odds: An Autobiography James Dyson talks about 5 years and 5,127 prototypes he produced before the vacuum cleaner became an over-night success.

No comments:

 
Add to Technorati Favorites