I made 5,127 prototypes of my vaccum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That’s how I came up with a solution. So I don’t mind failure.

The important thing is to learn from mistakes - something graduates are adept at. Our graduate engineers are working on new technology - from uncharted applications for our digital motor, to a new take on the hand dryer. With an unhindered mind, nothing is off limits.

Enjoy failure and learn from it. You never learn from success.

There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence - and in the end you make it look like a quantum leap.

I think the search engines are the new equivalent of publishing: an enabler of information.

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.

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