I remember one quote from Hermann Houser (one of the founders of Acorn)... "I gave them two important things to develop the Arm chip. I gave them no money, and I gave them no people".
That's reminiscent of the famous "janitor" letter written by IBM's president Watson in 1963. He asked why the CDC 6600 was a better computer than IBM's when Seymour Cray's team had "34 people including the janitor" while IBM had a "vast development effort".
Cray's response (probably apocryphal) was, "It seems like Mr. Watson has answered his own question."
It's amazing what necessity can accomplish...