WYND began with a pocket-size answer to dirty air. Its more consequential invention may be a sensor that tells a hotel manager what happened in a room - while there is still time to act.

A freshman NASA proposal became a reactor, then a company, then a wager on the geometry of chipmaking: clean the few cubic feet around the wafer instead of an entire factory.
A cardboard cyclone became a bagless-vacuum empire. Then came fans, hair dryers, headphones and a £500 million car that never shipped - a useful map of where obsessive product engineering wins, and where it runs out of road.