It was great to see Matthew Syed in action today. For someone who’s not short of sporting achievements, as a three-time Commonwealth table tennis champion and a two-time Olympian, it would be easy for Matthew to put his success down to his being naturally talented. Who would argue with him, with all those medals clinking around his neck?

Well, he does. He suggested, as he does in greater detail in his book Bounce, that talent makes very little difference, it’s lots and lots and lots of hard work and effort that gets people to the top of their game, whether it be on the sporting field, racing track or in the boardroom.

Here’s just one of the many fascinating  that Matthew has to offer to prove his point – Although many identify Mozart as something of a child prodigy, by the age of 6, young Wolfgang had already spent more than 3,000 hours at the piano. As Matthew said, it’d be hard not to be successful with that amount of time spent practising.