Nobody wants the expenditure of a lease on a factory which lasts 21 years. You can't plan 21 years ahead.

So I think the winners in recession are the people who produce new technology that does things better, which people really want.

Failure is so much more interesting because you learn from it. That's what we should be teaching children at school, that being successful the first time, there's nothing in it. There's no interest, you learn nothing actually.

I've fought court battles over my inventions before.

I'm not into politics but I am committed to a cause: ensuring design technology and engineering stays on the U.K. curriculum, alongside science and maths - grounding abstract theory, merging the practical with the academic.

Failure is an enigma. You worry about it, and it teaches you something.

If you can't be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think.