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Finance is critical. If sufficient investment is made in infrastructure and venture capital is made available, there will be a big improvement in the situation.

My one concern is that when money gets tight, it's easy to cut R&D funding that isn't tied to a specific project - look at what's happened to NASA's aviation research.

It's important to understand how people perceive risk, and how that translates into investment behavior.

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

I tend to look at potential investments from the standpoint of whether it is a valuable contribution to society.

My top priority will be to secure maximum value for money in aid through greater transparency, rigorous independent evaluation and an unremitting focus on results.

Planning cities is a necessary but risky business.

I believe it is an important project, it makes the cost of doing business lower and they will make us more competitive at the same time, it will also provide some satisfaction to the people who demand services for them of the quality they want and also quickly.

Ideally, I want us to be working on things where if we're not working on them, they won't happen; companies where if we don't fund them they will not receive funding.

One of the downsides of money is if there's no money, there are very few real jerks who are attached to your project. And if there is money, you do attract some very difficult, unhelpful people.