James Dyson on education:
I've always thought that schoolchildren should be marked by the number of failures they've had. The child who tries strange things and experiences lots of failures to get there is probably more creative.This is an interesting perspective. We have always want our kids to behave well and to stay out of trouble. That is, we want our kids to avoid failures. We don't even allow them to fall and pick themselves up! And James Dyson has the following to say about why we need failures:
We're taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven't, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that's very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It's exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You're on it, and you can't get off. I spent seven years on our washing machine...All of a sudden, I find this is so opposite to engineering. In engineering, we identify and eliminate risks. We are always looking for the path with the least resistance. Doing things that are "silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous" is never in engineers' blood.
Also read about how other successful people and businesses failed here. Einstein, Edison and Mozart had done their share of hard work as well.
