Apartments are getting smaller on a whole. Houses are getting smaller. People don't need great big vacuums anymore.

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.

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

We have to change our culture so you can create wealth from making things and don't just try to make money out of money

Hire inexperience. This year we plan to hire 200 engineers - half of whom are recent grads. Young people are not burdened by years of experience. They haven't learned - or been told - what is right or wrong. With engineering, there is no tried and tested path. You try, and fail, and fix, and fail again.

In the past, the U.K. got away with selling things that weren't unusual. Now it's no use trying to export without having something that's unusual and better.

I think people are realizing that engineering and science are extremely good degrees to get and you'll be very highly paid once you've got them.