Anyone developing new products and new technology needs one characteristic above all else: hope.

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

Engineering is treated with disdain, on the whole. It's considered to be rather boring and irrelevant, yet neither of those is true.

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

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

Arbitrary benchmarks cheat kids out of a fulfilling education.

I've obviously used fans - I wouldn't say all my life, because we couldn't afford them when I was young, but from my 20s and onwards we've had to use fans. And I've always loathed them. Everything about them. The way you adjust them, getting them at the angle you want. Carrying them. Cleaning them. The danger of putting your finger in them.