In the digital age of "overnight" success stories such as Facebook, the hard slog is easily overlooked.

The Web is fascinating and transformative, but it's an easy, flashy, get-rich-quick option to the hard graft of proper industry.

If you invent something, you're doing a creative act. It's like writing a novel or composing music. You put your heart and soul into it, and money. It's years of your life, it's your house remortgaged, huge emotional investment and financial investment.

[In my home workshop,] generally I'm mending things, which is interesting because you learn a lot about why they broke.

As an engineer I'm constantly spotting problems and plotting how to solve them.

What I've learned from running is that the time to push hard is when you're hurting like crazy and you want to give up. Success is often just around the corner.

The one size fits all approach of standardized testing is convenient but lazy.