People ask me all the time what do you want to be known for? My answer is simple. I want people to say 'Shaquille O'Neal was a nice guy…' forget how much money I made, forget how many championships I won, or what type of businessman I am.

I remember we used to have much better family ties too… parents very often lived with you, little children learned from the older generations, there was a deep personal link between generations… now? if I give advice to one of my grandchildren they laugh and say, 'oh my, you don't know about our lives today…'

At Dyson our philosophy has always been to invest in the long term. To power our 25 year pipeline of technology we have just announced a further £1.5 billion investment into new research and development on top of our current spending of £3 million a week. You cannot create disruptive technology without investing heavily in the long term.

Robert Edwards won the 2010 Nobel Prize for IVF. By then, millions of children had been born through it. On the very day his Nobel was announced, the Vatican said giving him the prize was 'completely out of order'. Same person, same achievement, same day -- celebrated as a saviour by some, condemned as a murderer by others. That is what a real moral controversy looks like. It doesn't dissolve, even after the technology has changed millions of lives.

The most common mistake is to stop challenging when things are going well. I recognise failure as not having made a business better than when you were first involved.