Everyone gets knocked back, no one rises smoothly to the top without hindrance. The ones who succeed are those who say, right, let’s give it another go.

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.

Fear is always a good motivator.

Engineers are behind the cars we drive, the pills we pop and the way we power our homes.

Stumbling upon the next great invention in an 'ah-ha!' moment is a myth.

Cordless vacuums are designed for quick jobs, but you need enough power to do the job; you don't want the power waning over time.

If you didn't have patents, no one would bother to spend money on research and development. But with patents, if someone has a good idea and a competitor can't copy it, then that competitor will have to think of their own way of doing it. So then, instead of just one innovator, you have two or three people trying to do something in a new way.