I see [activists] getting really angry that people won't just do what the evidence tells them, and that's not very helpful. You need to actually think why that is.

Floundering around, learning by doing but also by failing, is not only good but inevitable.

In the end, that's a blind alley - we have to get back to being able to think on our feet and react.

There's a diversion between economic reality - integration, global village, everybody depending on everybody else - and cultural reality, which is people feeling invaded, undermined, threatened, wanting to have "stand-your-ground" legislation all over the place. It's alarming because at the moment, the fear is outweighing the benefits, and that's partially because the benefits have been so unequally distributed that lots of people don't feel better off. They feel threatened, angry and despairing.

Somewhere like Russia or China, decision-makers have far fewer constraints on acting than in more open systems.

People think there's a single solution to complex problems, and the solution is often making an enemy of a group of people - pulling back and rejecting the other.

Until you have looked in depth at the system and found out where women in Egypt are not being cut through female genital mutilation, or where kids in Vietnam are not malnourished, or where hospitals in America are getting rid of the superbugs anyway - unless you have that level of curiosity about what's going on without you, you will always come in with your great new recipe and just ignore what's going on, and that will make you much less effective at what you're trying to achieve.