Abstract
The President reviews his career which started in aerospace research and continued in industry, eventually becoming Group Managing Director of GKN, then Chairman of Simon Engineering. He outlines the difficulties encountered during the United Kingdom recession in the early 1980s and how these problems were tackled. He gives his views on engineering innovation and the means by which it can be encouraged within a large company. He lists the factors that contribute to successful innovation and illustrates these by describing some specific products. He concludes by quoting some rules for innovation.