Economies are complex beasts that need people to do an extraordinary range of tasks.

The most important innovators often don't need any technologies - just imagination and acute sensitivity to people's needs.

Science is, rightly, searching for drugs to arrest ageing or to slow the advance of dementia. But the evidence suggests that many of the most powerful factors determining how you age come from what you do, and what you do with others: whether you work, whether you play music, whether you have regular visitors.

Lots of creativity is and should be solitary.

There are hardly any apprenticeships in care; hardly any schools preparing teenagers for jobs in care; and few signs that politicians know what to do to raise the status and rewards for what will soon be one of our most important industries.

Teenagers learn best by doing things, they learn best in teams and they learn best by doing things for real - all the opposite of what mainstream schooling actually does.

I can think of nothing worse than a think-tank where everybody agreed.