Some people are academically inclined some vocationally and we shouldn't penalise the latter.
The one size fits all approach of standardized testing is convenient but lazy.
Apartments are getting smaller on a whole. Houses are getting smaller. People don't need great big vacuums anymore.
I learned that the moment you want to slow down is the moment you should accelerate.
Arbitrary benchmarks cheat kids out of a fulfilling education.
Anger is a good motivator.
Insurance companies don't make anything.
Reality TV is anything but.
Manufacturing is more than just putting parts together. It's coming up with ideas testing principles and perfecting the engineering as well as final assembly.
[M]anufacturing science and engineering are ... incredibly creative. I'd venture to say more so than creative advertising agencies and things that are known as the creative industries.
China has all the advantages in the world. But it doesn't have a history of free thinking risk-taking pioneers - the kind of people the U.S. is built upon.
In the digital age of 'overnight' success stories such as Facebook the hard slog is easily overlooked.
I think if you have to pay for your education you worry very seriously about you're going to do when you've got your degree.
Today computers are almost second nature to most of us.
The wonderful thing about Apple technology is just how intuitive it is.
Designing aircraft and racing cars is an extremely exciting thing.
Well air-conditioning is not a good thing.
Anyone developing new products and new technology needs one characteristic above all else: hope.
People buy products if they're better.
Children want the challenge of difficult tasks - just look how much better they are than their parents on a computer.
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.
The U.S. is the biggest investor in research and development in the world. It has the best universities. Keeping them supplied with the best talent is essential.
I don't do something necessarily to make a big profit or because it's a logical business decision.
[In my home workshop ] generally I'm mending things which is interesting because you learn a lot about why they broke.
Britain's great strength is its innovative design and engineering natural ability and we're not using it.
Business is constantly changing constantly evolving.
An inventor's path is chorused with groans riddled with fist-banging and punctuated by head scratches.
Design and technology should be the subject where mathematical brainboxes and science whizzkids turn their bright ideas into useful products.
I grew up running miles of the Norfolk coastline. I'd think nothing of a six-mile run before breakfast. I still run though not as far and not before muesli.
In order to fix it you need a passionate anger about something that doesn't work well.
If robots are to clean our homes they'll have to do it better than a person.
I've fought court battles over my inventions before.
At school I enjoyed playing the bassoon. I was in the orchestra and played the melody when the other boys sang hymns at prayers time.
Fear is always a good motivator.
People will make leaps of faith and get excited by your product if you just get it in front of them.
You need a stubborn belief in an idea in order to see it realised.
Beauty can come in strange forms.
Everyone has ideas. They may be too busy or lack the confidence or technical ability to carry them out. But I want to carry them out. It is a matter of getting up and doing it.
Engineers are behind the cars we drive the pills we pop and the way we power our homes.
Engineering undergraduates should not be charged fees. They should receive grants not student loans and the government will get the money back long-term from increased exports.
China can and will be an invaluable trading partner to both the U.S. and the U.K.
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.
If you want to do something different you're going to come up against a lot of naysayers.
Companies are not ingenious it's the people in them that are.
The computer dictates how you do something whereas with a pencil you're totally free.
The media thinks that you have to make science sexy and concentrate on themes such as rivalry and the human issues.
As an engineer I'm constantly spotting problems and plotting how to solve them.
Don't listen to experts.
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.
Engineering is treated with disdain on the whole. It's considered to be rather boring and irrelevant yet neither of those is true.
When I started off I was working in a shed behind my house. All I had was a drill an electric drill. That was the only machine I had.
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.
When decisions on nuclear power stations and runways are delayed and the government dilly-dallies people think they aren't important.
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.
What I often do is just think of a completely obtuse thing to do almost the wrong thing to do. That often works because you start a different approach something no one has tried.
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.
All our engineers are designers and all our designers are engineers.
Far too few designers put any thought into usability ending up with a great product that's completely inaccessible.
I want entrepreneurs to be engineers and scientists and designers; they don't necessarily have to be Internet entrepreneurs or retail entrepreneurs.
The Web is fascinating and transformative but it's an easy flashy get-rich-quick option to the hard graft of proper industry.
It is an extreme perversion of capitalism if you can trade in something before you have even paid for it.
The way the world is going it's technology driven. And it isn't just driven by the old super powers it's driven by the far east and new emerging economies.
I like living on the edge.
Nobody wants the expenditure of a lease on a factory which lasts 21 years. You can't plan 21 years ahead.
Now we don't teach children in schools to be creative. We don't teach them to experiment. We want them to fill in the right answer tick the right answer in the box.
When you say 'design ' everybody thinks of magazine pages. So it's an emotive word. Everybody thinks it's how something looks whereas for me design is pretty much everything.
As a modern employer you have to treat people well.
Emerging markets are hugely important.
We need to encourage investors to invest in high-technology startups.
Everybody recognizes that if you can make very efficient electric motors you can make a quantum leap forward.
I think the search engines are the new equivalent of publishing: an enabler of information.
Failure is an enigma. You worry about it and it teaches you something.
Life is a mountain of solvable problems and I enjoy that.
I was frustrated as a child when I had to use a vacuum. It had a screaming noise and the smell of stale dog and a lack of performance.
My interest in film is sort of catholic - apart from science fiction and horror movies I'll watch almost everything.
I hate science fiction.
Success is made of 99% failure.
Successes teach you nothing. Failures teach you everything. Making mistakes is the most important thing you can do.
Enjoy failure and learn from it. You never learn from success.
Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success.
The key to success is failure"¦ Success is made of 99 percent failure.
Goodness I know nothing about nuclear energy.
What I've learned from running is that the time to push hard is when you're hurting like crazy and you want to give up. Success is often just around the corner.
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.
Stumbling upon the next great invention in an 'ah-ha!' moment is a myth.
One of the most fun inventions of my lifetime is the Mini.
I'm afraid I am tidy and I have to be because the office is open plan and my glass office door is literally always open.
We should have A-levels in vocational subjects.
If you really want to improve technology if you want things to work better and be better you've got to protect the person who spends a lot of effort money and time developing that new technology.
So I think the winners in recession are the people who produce new technology that does things better which people really want.
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.
I just want things to work properly.
I just think things should work properly
After the idea there is plenty of time to learn the technology
There's nothing wrong with things taking time.