Learning to see waste and systematically eliminate it has allowed lean companies such as Toyota to dominate entire industries. Lean thinking defines value as 'providing benefit to the customer' anything else is waste.

Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples - where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping The Sports Authority which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised.

IBM has taken a leadership role in this area and is prepared to be a technology partner with companies around the world to take advantage of these new developments.

Republican leadership in Congress let the energy companies write the energy bill that sent prices soaring and has turned a blind eye to the struggles of working families trying to make ends meet.

Not everybody is created equal and it's important for companies to identify those high potentials and treat them differently accelerate their development and pay them more. That process is so incredibly important to developing first-class leadership in a company.

Great companies in the way they work start with great leaders.

We need to recognise that the whole edifice of our fifth estate of our journalism has been built on a foundation of newspaper journalism and that that foundation is crumbling. The management of the media companies will deny that the end is nigh. I hope they are right.

The best thing that ever happened to me is that nothing happened in writing. I ended up working for engineering companies and that's where I found my material in the everyday struggle between capitalism and grace. Being broke and tired you don't come home your best self.

I actually do think you're seeing this trend towards organizations just caring more about their brand and engaging. And so I think Home Depot will want to humanize itself. I think that's a lot of why companies are starting blogs are just giving more insight into what's going on with them.

I think that the entertainment industry itself has a history of chasing success. Any time a hit product comes out all the other companies start chasing after that success and trying to recreate it by putting out similar products.