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 no point in just hankering for the big trade unions of the 1950s or '60s.

We should look at how "the enemy" - people that you wouldn't necessarily agree with - have done change and see whether there's bits in there that we could learn from.

Some kinds of activists are more willing to try stuff out, see if works and think on their feet, but some of the people who are working on [change] find that very difficult: They've been schooled into thinking you have to come up with the perfect plan in advance. It has become a bit technocratic.

I keep coming back to the phrase "Dance with the system" - not just march onwards no matter what happens.

Economists who studied in the '80s tend to have a pretty crude neoclassical view that's just about freeing up prices and markets, and then you'll get the growth and everybody benefits. And they'll just repeat that, because if you're a minister or a senior civil servant, you don't have time to read anything anymore. You get very fixed in your views.

When you get talking to people in positions of power, you find that often their worldview is framed either in terms of their disciplinary studies at university and/or the country where they first got interest in development.