Had I not defended it and stood by it, I think it could have disappeared into history- but because I protected it, stood up for it, believed in it and understood why it existed and what it had done? That's why it still remains.

While the crisis made the problems of the euro-structure clear, they were present long before. Indeed, the euro helped create the crisis: for the markets seemed to have vastly overestimated the extent to which the single market/single currency had reduced risk (another example of market irrationality), leading to excessive lending to the afflicted countries.

One of the simplest but hardest things to do is to be honest with ourselves. We are works-in-progress from the day we're born, till the day we die. You should never, ever, stop working on yourself.

If we now want a science of consciousness, we need to find a way of bringing consciousness back into the domain of science. We need to find a way of bringing back together these two domains that Galileo separated. And that is really the challenge as I see it.

Companies and organisations need to understand and embrace gaming in its totality. Gamification is just one small element — a subset — of what a true gaming strategy entails. To me, it's something that should be an integral part of how companies think about their consumer or customer engagement strategy.