Dyson’s heroic struggle: How a vacuum cleaner’s success reveals brands need personal associations Available to Purchase

eflecting on DuPont’s 1971 decision to withdraw its leather substitute Corfam after $350 million losses, chairman Richard Heckert observed “Innovation to me is inevitably linked to society and to products that are going to make society better. It has to be useful, it has to be commercially important, or it’s just a curiosity”. If a major corporation can fail with a product once billed as “the future for your feet” then individual entrepreneurs face even greater challenges when building a brand from scratch. A new study uses the phenomenal success of James Dyson’s vacuum cleaners to explore links between positive brand values and innovation.