It is impossible to have the World Bank type of policy that is saying one policy fits all – educate your population, adopt better institutions, adopt family planning, and this will be the rescue. On the contrary, resources are limited, and we need to target the elements that are creating hurdles in the development of each country.

What seemed like trash to this giant software company was akin to Aladdin's treasure for a 12-year-old. I recruited my older sister as my business partner, and we began to gather discarded floppy disks using my youngest sister's pram. As an added bonus, we offered same-day delivery, a feature that we cheekily called 'Amazon Now'.

When you're blending digital and physical, you'd better know how things are made. When I talk to my students it's shocking how few of them have ever been to a factory, and how few of them know what a CNC machine is or how goods get from A to B efficiently.

In our culture, particularly in the last 300-500 years in Western culture, people have become much more ambivalent to ecstatic experiences. The idea of losing control is seen as dangerous and shameful... We're a culture that's very much about individual autonomy, and ecstasy is the opposite of that – it's about surrendering control.

When you're starting out, your ambition shouldn't be defined by someone else's success criteria. That's something I struggled with, and still do. I struggle to align my business objectives with my life and my own motivations rather than externally formed motivations that come from culture and society.

Dogs, chipmunks, squirrels, fish and dolphins do not have a meta-cognitive understanding of themselves. A dog can feel sad (we think) but cannot have a meta-cognitive understanding of the fact they feel sad and what to therefore do about.

Doing something which has a social purpose gives you the motivation to overcome the hurdles and obstacles that you will meet along the way. It gives you that inner strength when you're doing something and you know it's making a massive difference and a huge impact.

Each time we get a bit of momentum in the economy, each time our exporters make up for the fact that domestic demand is flat.... we get knocked back by the Euro Zone.

poverty seems to be an aggravating factor in all types of violence

There are plenty of reasonable, moderate, reformist, liberal leaders who just don’t quite know what to do. Our book ideally will help them make that choice. That is my hope.

It's about catching that surge of emotion, be it offense or anger, usually incited by someone attempting to ignite your social identity or signal an outgroup threat, with a likely aim to shape your thoughts or actions.

One of the key things to look out for is the centralisation of power – in most of the places we see conflict, there is highly centralised power, and often few checks and balances on whoever is in control. Unchecked interests can lead people to ignore the costs of war.