Earlier this week, I met a new friend for breakfast – an M&A man for some of the biggest media executives.

He told me all about his daughters; one will represent the UK at the Olympics, while the other is an accomplished actress. He explained how he had raised them, and two of the things he said chimed with my own views on what makes women achieve their full potential.

When I was in my late twenties, I had a baptism of fire while trying to establish the Power PC chip as a new industry standard.

In early 1992, IBM, Apple and Motorola announced that they would be developing a new microprocessor – to be called the Power PC – to power the Apple Macintosh and new PCs.

In my marketing role for Motorola, relatively early on in my career, I didn’t think it could get more exciting than being at the centre of an industry where a new standard was emerging.

Love means never having to say you’re sorry. Or so the 1970s film Love Story, starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neil, famously claimed. I never agreed with that sentiment then – and I still do not today.

Valentine’s Day on Sunday got me thinking about how important what you actually say is. For us Yanks over here, no matter how long we have lived in Britain, we often still miss out on some of the nuances of language and custom.

A thriving technology sector is a key driver for success against the background of a weak economic recovery and an ongoing debate about the relative values of the service economy and declining manufacturing base of the UK economy. The UK has no shortage of profitable technology companies. But for every Autonomy and Monitise there is a host that remain small and do not go on to become major global competitors, or do so as part of a larger and better resourced parent rather than consolidating the market themselves.