And looking at today's music scene I think it's cool that there are a lot of consumers and fans not limited by what radio and the record companies tell them to buy.

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There's a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

So a more sensible thing it seemed to me was to go to Silicon Valley and be pushing on the technology companies to accelerate the use of audio and music in computers.

China has legally purchased high performance computers advanced machine tools and semiconductor-manufacturing equipment from several American companies.

From cell phones to computers quality is improving and costs are shrinking as companies fight to offer the public the best product at the best price. But this philosophy is sadly missing from our health-care insurance system.

Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations... They now need more and more expensive clerks even though they call them 'operators' or 'programmers.'

Significant officials at publicly traded companies are casually and cavalierly engaged in insider trading. Because insider trading has as one of its elements communication it doesn't take rocket science to realize it's nice to have the communication on tape.

Imagine if the pension funds and endowments that own much of the equity in our financial services companies demanded that those companies revisit the way mortgages were marketed to those without adequate skills to understand the products they were being sold. Management would have to change the way things were done.

We need a number of solutions - we need more efficiency and conservation. Efficiency is a big one. I think car companies need to do a lot better in producing more efficient cars. They have the technology we just need to demand them as consumers.

We have some worse scenarios for which we need to prepare as companies. For the moment we're planning for the worst and the worst is now and the car market is down more than 15 percent in France. There is so much uncertainty.

I still work hard to know my business. I'm continuously looking for ways to improve all my companies and I'm always selling. Always.

In the coming years if not sooner social media will become a powerful tool that consumers will aggressively use to influence business attitudes and force companies into greater social responsibility - and I suggest move us towards a more sustainable practice of capitalism.

For the first time we're allowing developers who don't work at Facebook to develop applications just as if they were. That's a big deal because it means that all developers have a new way of doing business if they choose to take advantage of it. There are whole companies that are forming whose only product is a Facebook Platform application.

Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You'd be amazed how many companies don't listen to their customers.

There are two kinds of companies those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.

I have several computer companies. One of them I have a program for wide-format printing. I have a beauty program. So I have several different programs that I own for printing.

It's harder but we're still finding oil in Oklahoma today. The bar has been raised on startup companies but it can still be done. Every regulation and every rule limits you but yes it can still be done. That's the beauty of living in a free country and having the freedom to have an idea and become an entrepreneur.

Innovation is this amazing intersection between someone's imagination and the reality in which they live. The problem is many companies don't have great imagination but their view of reality tells them that it's impossible to do what they imagine.

There are very few dance companies in the world and you have to be phenomenal. You have to not be injured. You have to have a really strong mind to deal with the dance world. People who can do it are amazing to me. You cannot have a life outside of dance.

I'm really lucky that my record companies have been patient with me and leave me alone and give me the time to make it right in my mind.

Regardless of age regardless of position regardless of the business we happen to be in all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.

About the time I turned 50 I experienced the profound biological change that often accompanies women at that age. Also I put two kids in college and lost both of my parents so I'm no longer somebody's daughter.

There are signs that the age of petroleum has passed its zenith. Adjusted for inflation a barrel of crude oil now sells for three times its long-run average. The large western oil companies which cartellised the industry for much of the 20th century are now selling more oil than they find and are thus in the throes of liquidation.