“IF you don’t work harder, you’ll end up working in a factory.” That’s the threat my teachers used at school.
Ironically, I did end up working in a factory — entirely of my own volition. What’s more, I enjoy it. And it pays well.
Yet my delight in engineering and manufacturing is still seen by many as eccentric or downmarket — “Oh ... so that’s what you do, is it?” Even venture capitalists adopt a disdainful tone when turning you down for funds to build a manufacturing business. I speak from experience. I was written off by them when I asked for a loan to start the Dyson business. They dismissed me on the grounds that mere engineers can’t know what makes a good business plan.
And then there is the geek factor. Engineers, like scientists, conjure up stereotypes of bearded men with questionable taste in jumpers.
Sir Christopher Frayling, rector of the Royal College of Art, has done research on how engineers are perceived. “Draw an engineer” was the challenge he gave a group of children between the ages of four and 11. The result: people who repair things, not people who create things.
The pictures were delightful but, let’s be frank, there is an image problem. That unsettles me. And not because I am worried about my own credibility.
This misperception of science and engineering jobs as geeky, dirty and dull puts off young people from a bright, exciting, profitable future.
The result is that we produce only 24,000 engineering graduates a year compared with 300,000 in China and 450,000 in India. And don’t imagine that Indian and Chinese engineers are stuck at the grunt end of the market. China’s education minister says he wants to change the “Made in China” label to “Made and Designed in China”. I spoke at a design conference in Hong Kong and expected a handful of fellow engineers. Instead there were 2,500 Chinese manufacturers.
Britain’s balance of trade is sinking into the red. We could soon be in economic trouble if we don’t change.
We have a choice: do we want Britain to be a theme park or a hub of business activity? We are on course to shuffle into a sort of residential home for retired great powers — but it doesn’t have to be like that.
Globalisation is a great opportunity. The needs of people in Nagoya, Nebraska and Nuremburg are the same. If we can be cleverer than our competitors and develop better technology and better engineering, then British inventiveness can continue to be part of our culture. That is why I have been working for some years on plans for the Dyson School of Design Innovation.
Now it is ready to go ahead and we plan to open in Bath in September 2008.
It will be a new kind of school to encourage Britain’s next generation of entrepreneurs, engineers, designers and inventors. It will be a unique private-public partnership involving big businesses like Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Rotork and Williams F1 as well as local and national educational authorities.
A school that greets you with a Formula One racing car and aircraft prototypes as you enter the atrium is just a bit different.
Besides providing prototypes, leading engineering and high-tech businesses are involving their own engineers through a mentoring programme. I had no idea that I would invent, design and make better things until I met Alex Moulton and Jeremy Fry — both inspirational engineers. The school will offer young people practical programmes in engineering, design and enterprise, with hands-on experience of the latest technology more often seen in business research-and-development centres.
In a typical week, 2,500 young men and women from Bath and the surrounding area will attend. Pretty soon, the regular stream of qualified young engineers and designers will enhance the region’s already strong position in high-tech employment.
The school is also a National Centre of Excellence, so young talent from around the country will attend residential holiday courses. Teachers will receive specialist modules to use in their own schools. We will even have special courses for adults who have discovered a passion for engineering later in life.
In Britain we can occasionally be a bit negative about enterprise. So let’s tackle three of the questions often raised by doubters.
Will there be a demand for engineering and design studies?
We have done our homework and, interestingly, when 12,000 young people were questioned, no fewer than 8,000 expressed interest in studying engineering at school — if they were given the opportunity. We can still be a nation of Brunels and Frank Williamses if given the chance.
Isn’t manufacturing declining in the era of the internet?
This is one of those received notions that people swallow without any evidence — even hard-nosed venture capitalists do it. The myth is at variance with the facts. Manufacturing industry continues to grow much faster than “new technology”. So-called old technology — as exemplified by companies such as Toyota — is expanding much more quickly than the new kids on the block. It is a vastly bigger international employer than Microsoft or Oracle. Unfortunately, it just isn’t happening in Britain.
But isn’t manufacturing now all about outsourcing to low-cost producers abroad?
This question reveals a muddling of two different things. Yes, it would be self-defeating to try to make things that can be made more cheaply elsewhere.
The way forward is to make things that are better designed, better engineered and with better technology than our competitors’ products. This is the blueprint for 21st-century success embraced by Japan. It is why Japan makes six times as many patent applications as Britain and spends three times as much on research and development. The Japanese government is about to spend £128 billion on research and development. The figure in Britain is £1 billion.
At Dyson, we were forced by local planning objections, as well as the disappearance of our suppliers overseas, to move the assembly of goods from Malmesbury, Wiltshire, to Malaysia.
But we have greatly upgraded the quality of jobs done in Malmesbury. We now employ almost as many people locally as before — and the numbers are still rising — but they are disproportionately engineering and other high-skilled jobs.
Upgrading is the way forward. I think that this is being recognised by political as well as business leaders. I am optimistic that — whereas we needed 5,000 test versions of my cyclonic vacuum cleaner to get it good enough for market — with the school we may just score a hole in one.
