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If you look over the last ten years, great wealth creation has almost universally come about through the companies that have actually had a profound founder. I would turn it round and say I don't think one can find an example where that is not true.

So why doesn't everyone seek them out?

The way Baillie Gifford thinks about the world is that it changes far more and the opportunities are far greater than the commonality of thought about both investment and risk allow.

Not everyone thinks this way. Many of the problems in the global economy are brought about when you have a group of people who are much more preoccupied by their relative results compared to their colleagues over the next few months, by the bonuses that they may get at that end period of time and by the fact that actually they don't much care about what happens to the companies that they own the trading certificates of. They do not appreciate that uncertainty and the noise generated by short-term factors is secondary in the long run to trends and developments that will go towards shaping the future.

Unless you are thinking about this in the long term, and thinking about it as profit maximisation rather than risk adjusted, you won't notice the impact that this type of visionary leadership actually has.

So why find genius entrepreneurs to fund? Because I think there are more truly great, truly brilliantly managed companies with serious, in-depth competitive advantages at scale, than has been true, probably at any time since the institutions of capitalism really took off in the 18th century.

It means that the opportunities are enormous.

Our objective is to identify great transformational companies at a very early stage of their existence and try and support them for decades into the future. As a result we've been lucky enough to meet many brilliant people who have created great companies.

What we've found is that at first they really don't believe that you are going to support them for the long term, but we hope we have proven to those companies that that is what we do and that it has major impacts, both on them and for our shareholders. For instance by being a shareholder of Amazon for over ten years...do you gain a reputation for being loyal that matters? I think so. Warren Buffett's on record as saying that the most amazing thing about Amazon is the way they've managed to gather a set of shareholders who've said it doesn't matter if you don't have any profits for the next few years 'get on with it'.

We do believe that being willing to suffer is actually one of the most important things that we can do. Very often it is owning companies through difficult periods that matter.

Today Jeff Bezos thinks about shareholders not as how many shares they own but how long they have owned them.

So why are we welcomed? I think it's a tribute to the extreme rarity of genuine long-term shareholders.

Our conviction is that we should use our limited influence to persuade the companies in which we invest that they are better thinking of their long-run credibility than their short-run profit maximization.

We are quite prepared to be outspoken about these issues.

I think our role is something that can become even more important at the smaller level and the earlier level, for example when the company is unlisted. In a sense these companies are being built by their founders and built by the scale of the opportunity and they haven't had to do very much.

We know that looking forward they have got to find a group of shareholders and then be very straight with them rather than over-promise or make themselves susceptible to the quarterly earnings view. It's a very conscious getaway from that.

This ability to think ahead is something that is critical not just to the companies but also to the way that we have to go about our own task.

It's important to realise that actually we aren't clever enough to work everything out. I do worry that it's inherent in how people think about finance, you recruit lots of very clever people who are used to being right, who want to have the illusion of being right. Actually the best reason for talking to these people is because we can learn from them. I find myself conceptualising my own job much more as telling people what other people tell me, rather than anything to do with me.

We have to accept uncertainty about the future direction of these companies. I think trying to guess what's coming next is a wonderful game to play when one is lucky enough to talk to Mr Bezos but we're just not as clever as he is, we don't know as much as he does so it's about trust as to what's coming, there will always be something that we have not thought of.

Bezos is after all someone who regards his main task when asked what he spends his time on as 'thinking about the next big thing'.

Scale of ambition matters. There is a simple but fascinating challenge for us here. I think that over the last ten years, we've got slightly better at trying to envisage what the scale of the opportunity actually is. Trying to force yourself to envisage these things is really important. Companies where it is too difficult to say where it is going are the ones we need to work on. Those are the ones that create outsize value at the end of it. There was a brilliant essay by the venture capitalist Michael Moritz in which he said the most difficult thing is to imagine how great a great company can be.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, has proved remarkably adept at anticipating future trends in social media as the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp illustrate. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, provided one of the best explanations of the corporate strategy behind Facebook's $19bn acquisition of WhatsApp in a Rolling Stone interview when he said, 'Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be the next Facebook'.

Another example would be a trip to Seattle when I was talking to Amazon and found myself in a state of almost near bemusement that a company that is now worth over $400 billion believes that it has only just started. The founder and Chief Executive, Jeff Bezos, is totally dedicated to making this a much bigger and more profitable company in the future.

So what we're focused on, completely focused on, is trying to identify and own the great companies of the future that will drive the global economy.

Is Baillie Gifford actually a firm that has the ability to benefit society through the businesses it backs? I think the answer to that ought to be yes.

Zuckerberg really believes that by connecting everybody on the planet, providing that level of communication, it will be a better world.

At Illumina the genetic healthcare pioneers, you have these extraordinary ambitions. And the people running this are people whose families suffered from all the diseases in question.

Looking further ahead, both Amazon and Alphabet are talking about making their incredible artificial intelligence (AI) technologies available to the masses at very low cost.

So there is a form of long-term value creation that is of more value that goes beyond the narrower aspects of it.

It's something that actually is not just a good thing but is at two levels self-interested, because it's something we ought to unite around that that is your objective.

On the other hand, if we are making money for our clients and the savers that is a good thing.

But because they head in the same direction, it's not an either or.

I think it's a pity we can't grasp that actually your chances of being able to make money for your clients (and therefore have good outcomes financially for all of us) are actually helped by having obliquity about it.

Are we helping these visionaries to achieve great things? I hope that's right. I think the complexity is that – and this is just as true in China as it is in West Coast America - their visions are so big, so powerful, so aided by underlying technological changes that the rest of our society finds it quite hard to keep up.

Compare if you sat next to Mark Zuckerberg or whoever, the level of intelligence and insight would be so much more than if you sat next to a Fred Goodwin for example. That is problematic from the world's point of view. Can you imagine Boris trying to cope with the implications of genome editing as a regular occurrence? I can't.

And what is it that makes Elon Musk so much more important a figure than the rest of the greatest entrepreneurs of our age? The answer is outrageously simple. He is the only leader who starts with the question of what are the most critical problems to solve for the future of humanity. As his own view is that sustainable growth, the threat of climate change and the provision of an alternative home for the human race if the worst occurs are the obvious answers, then Tesla, Solar City and Space X are simply the logical outcome.

It doesn't matter that you wouldn't start an electric car company if you wanted an easy way to make money. It doesn’t matter that you have to defy powerful self-interested industries, conventional wisdoms and vast distances and looming personal bankruptcy to even contemplate achieving your ambitions. These goals are simply more critical, more vital and more significant than anything else available.

Ironically they may also be fantastic for shareholders as few, if any, will dare to follow.