Coming up fast: Decisions - James Dyson

My best ... 'Becoming a manufacturer as well as a designer, and employing engineering and art graduates to help with manufacturing. Being a manufacturer seems unpopular - plenty of people told me I shouldn't do it. But I get immense pleasure and fun and satisfaction out of it. It's also rewarding seeing the graduates go through the angst of designing and manufacturing a product and finally making it work. It was a perverse decision, like having the choice of taking an aeroplane across an island and instead swimming from one shore to another, but the perversity appealed to me.

No-one in the UK wants to manufacture any more, but the ability gives enormous freedom. It's more than just knowledge - it's practical know-how and experience. If you try to design without that ability then you are slightly impotent.'