A good idea turns every cog in your mind, making you scared of bed in case the whole machine grinds to a halt.

Do what gives you a buzz.

Ideas for gadgets for the disabled were coming into my head so fast they seemed to be arriving from somewhere outside of me, beamed down by an unremitting force. I had little control over them, or their flow. I would wake up in the middle of the night. A blinding flash of an idea would rouse me from my bed and I'd rush down to my workshop to have a go at it before the inspiration dimmed.

As long as you've got slightly more perception than the average wrapped loaf, you could invent something.

That was the Alka-Seltzer moment, the moment when the tablet hits the water and begins to fizz.

The notion that inventors are anorak-wearing crackpots with glasses held together with Sellotape is beguiling but wrong.

The key to success is to risk thinking unconventional thoughts. Convention is the enemy of progress.