The disease of complaining without acting to reverse or mitigate the issue must end. There is a positive to everything. Every problem is an opportunity, and there are some huge problems to solve.

The Institutions need to work together better and take a more global perspective. Most are Victorian in origin and are perhaps out of date and touch. They need more bright, adaptable people without idees fixes.

Governments are often not the benevolent, and comprise the same sort of economic actors that populate the rest of the economy. But they should not try to tell businesses what to do. But occasionally, there is a chance for government to take an initiative with regulation and infrastructure. Short-term politics means that these opportunities usually take courage and the politicians miss them. For example, it was US legislation on fuel economy that began to make a difference there. The sustainable energy markets are all about economics. Someone suggested that the UK government remove VAT and some kinds of tax on energy efficient solutions, and even subsidise zero emissions solutions (Pigovian approach). Tax on the guzzlers is never likely to be hard enough, as they've got the money to do it and it will be a badge of honour to those determined to emit CO2 when only the richer can afford to do so.

People felt that having the RDAs competing with each other was counterproductive and made us less able to compete against well-organised nations and foreign SMEs alike. In particular, a lot of effort is dissipated as we compete with each other across regions and companies near one of the arbitrary regional borders must take fairly odd stances. These RDA borders are neither political nor do they make a lot of sense business-wise.

People saw the combination of the British obsession with investment in property and the sustainable energy mood as a big opportunity for electronics, intelligent home, investment and property & design, architectural & construction sectors (HVM Series announces expos and conferences on these in 2007, beginning at HEAT07 in Cambridge on Tuesday 04 December 2007 at the New Hall Conference Centre).

Young people are smarter than one may think. They will do the opposite of what others tell them to do. So government campaigns (to stop them doing 'soft' degrees, and switch to engineering, etc) will tend to fail badly. One sees that it is a better life being an engineer than a financier, even if the luxuries are fewer earlier on in life. However, we have a last chance to educate, without loss of creativity, and skill people at the lower levels who are about to be left behind and threaten even more social upheaval and unrest.

Immigration is good for us and even better for the poorer home countries.

You need a Global Model, non-parochial, to grow HVM businesses. You need the best people and places wherever they are, for the task. That will benefit people of the world most. The conference was against protectionism, trade barriers, short-termism, but also against waste and profligacy which endangers all our futures ('weak property rights' of resources that 'belong' in some way to all of us; Coasian Approach to resources so that the market can still work well).

We British are great at globalisation, better than the USA, Europe and Japan. So HVM plays to UK strengths.

You just cannot sit and think the same way any more; the world is changing and the old models don't work or are poor.

We must remember we are trying to create high value rather than high cost. This brings in the design and general creative industries and marketing strongly. Some think that we should dissuade young people from the soft, creative industries, but HVM does not; the creative industries are thriving and work alongside HVM models.