The Eden Project is undoubtedly one the UK's success stories and the reputation of its chief executive, Tim Smit, has grown rapidly since the opening of this Cornish eco-attraction in 2001.
Just getting the Eden Project off the ground was a remarkable achievement for Smit and his team, who managed to raise £80m to transform a former china clay mine into what some people have described as the eighth wonder of the world.
Smit had opened the Lost Gardens of Heligan in 1992 but Eden was a much more ambitious and innovative project.
It needed all of his infectious enthusiasm to attract the supporters who made the project possible; people such as Peter Thoday, who worked with Smit at Heligan, and Philip McMillan Browse, a former president of the Institute of Horticulture.
"You couldn't have afforded to build Eden or come up with it intellectually without this network of friends," says Smit. "It was their excitement and enthusiasm that made it very special."
But Smit is not one to rest on his laurels, and even before Eden was fully opened to the public in March 2001, he was looking to the future.
"When you look at my senior team, almost all of them gave up really big jobs to join us," he says. "And that is important because most projects that start and are successful then go tits up because the people who started them aren't the people who can run something on a really big level.
"It exceeds their ability to manage. I came to it from the point of view that you can only tell the quality of a stereo when you turn the volume up. So I wanted people who were ready for being big when we were small."
His foresight has paid off as Eden now attracts more than 1 million visitors a year and employs about 400 people plus 200 seasonal staff. It plays a big role in Cornwall's regeneration and it is estimated that it has generated £1bn for the county's economy since its visitor centre opened in May 2000. And its policy of sourcing locally helps support numerous businesses in the region.
But Eden has not stood still and it seems to generate a constant stream of social and environmental initiatives. "We deliberately have quite consistent acts of renewal," says Smit.
"One of the things that Eden is good at is we begin by saying what would great look like. We don't talk about money, we ask what great would look like and work back from that."
How organisations enable their employees to think differently is one of the areas that fascinates Smit. He says institutions tend to develop certain ways of doing things that they endlessly repeat.
Many museums successfully attract lots of visitors, he says, but this success prevents them from thinking how they can do things even better.
"A lot of the time people try and improve what they have already without imagining it not existing," he says. "The very constraint of working with what you have can steer you in the direction of not making the best of the human talents you have."
This interest in the how institutions work is not limited to the management of visitor attractions and museums; it's related to the future well-being of the human race.
"My personal obsession is, if we have x amount of years in which to organise ourselves in a different way in order to be able to thrive in the conditions that are coming towards us, we have got to create organisations and institutions that are capable of adapting; but hardly any of our organisations and institutions are capable."
He describes the civil service as "stunningly unproductive" and "tied up in a most unproductive loop". He says: "They are not untalented people, they are not bad, but we have created this extraordinary policing system, and they are scared of making the sort of decisions the press might not like or the minister feels is rocking the boat.
"But we need to make the sort of decisions that are not just rocking the boat, but sinking the boat."
So, what's the answer? For Smit, part of it is Eden: "We built Eden because we wanted to have the kick-ass power to be able to assault lots of establishment ideas with a smile on our face and to enable some good people to break out of their chains to do the stuff we feel needs doing.
"We are not saying we know what it is that needs doing but we know that a group of people who have got together can come up with some solutions."
Eden is very much a platform for wider social and environmental change. Example's include this summer's Big Lunch, where an estimated 2 million people took part in an Eden-organised project to get people together over a series of Sunday lunches taking place all over the UK.
There is Eden's role in developing an eco-town in mid-Cornwall that got the green light in September, the month that also saw prime minister Gordon Brown announce 10,000 green work placements to be delivered in partnership with Eden.
And in October, the organisation started consultation over its plans for a geothermal power plant. All this in just a few months. These activities, and the many others that Eden is involved in, have made Smit a world-famous figure whose views are taken seriously in some very high places.
He has come a long way since taking archaeology and anthropology at Durham University. He followed this by spending ten years in the music industry as a composer and producer. Many people might dream of a job such as this, but while Smit liked the music, he did not like the industry.
"I was doing quite well in the rock music industry, but I'd lost my desire, I fell out of love with it. I didn't like what I'd become, I wasn't the person I'd dreamt I could become and I wanted a new start, to dare to be good, to do the best I could at something."
The move to Cornwall and the restoration of the Lost Gardens of Heligan changed everything for Smit, and set him on the path to where he is today. Now, he can almost be seen as an establishment figure, and was given a CBE in 2002.
But he is far too opinionated to lose all of his outsider status and fame does not seem to prevent him speaking his mind on a range of subjects, including museums.
He is particularly critical of museum academics, who he says are often poor communicators.
"I offended one of the families who funded the Metropolitan Museum of Art when I was their guest a few years back. I told them I thought it was rubbish.
"In the Egyptian wing, you have spent millions allowing academics to tell you this is Rameses 1 2 3, Nefertiti and all that stuff, but who the fuck cares? It's like a botanic garden with all the Latin names. By the time you get to ten, you forget number one."
He is very interested in science but finds that many exhibitions fail to convey the excitement of discovery. "I saw an exhibition on climate change at the Science Museum, which actually made me want to go out and drive a Porsche because it was so worthy. And it was sponsored by BP. I mean, Jesus."
He is more enthusiastic about the Sir John Soane's Museum in London. "You have a collection of stuff gathered by one person and it's just mad. But in its madness, it tells you an awful lot about a personality.
"Individual collections are actually quite revealing, whereas in a big exhibition on Assyrian entry gates, you go "fuck, they are big entry gates, that's good, now what?' Sometimes these things are utterly brilliant, but mostly they are curated by people of little ambition, which is a real sadness."
As Smit smokes his cigar and holds forth on a huge range of subjects, some of his views can seem contradictory. But what is consistent is his desire to empower people to think differently and develop ideas.
"I don't see my role as being an autocratic, saying do this, do that, do that other. I provoke thought, prod people and get them excited about stuff. We have a line management chart to persuade people we are legitimate.
"We paint the paintings that other people would like to see here so they feel comfortable. But we don't actually run ourselves like that. We run ourselves like quite a well-honed gang."
After ten years, Smit and his gang have come a long way, which is probably why he seems so excited about Eden's future.
Tim Smit, is the chief executive and co-founder of the Eden Project in Cornwall.
He read archaeology and anthropology at Durham University before working for ten years in the music industry as a composer and producer.
He moved to Cornwall in 1987, where he and John Nelson discovered and then restored the Lost Gardens of Heligan. He remains a director of the gardens.
In 2002, he was awarded a CBE. He has received honorary doctorates and fellowships from a number of universities and has written books about Heligan and Eden.
Smit was born in Holland in 1954. He lives in Fowey, Cornwall.