I do like group invention. I think there's really nothing more fun than sitting at a whiteboard with a group of smart people and spitballing and coming up with new ideas and objections to those ideas, and then solutions to the objections and going back and forth.

Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you're working on.

Kick-start your brain. New ideas come from watching something, talking to people, experimenting, asking questions and getting out of the office!

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.

It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which...you may find really marvellous ideas.

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top - I'm afraid that's not quite right.