I interned at Miramax and subsequently at Paramount because I was really curious about the future of entertainment - how were we going to get films online? While the inspiration for Box didn't come from that experience directly, it was very obvious t...
I try to go to my parents' house as much as I can. No matter how busy we are as a family, we always make that time to have that 'family together' day because we want to. You can't let work and life get in the way of spending time together.
Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.
By far the most important factor in the success or failure of any school, far more important than tests or standards or business-model methods of accountability, is simply attracting the best-educated, most exciting young people into urban schools an...
At thirty-five, having spent over twenty years running varied businesses for my family, I decided to sit down and write my first novel. I had never written anything longer than a couple of pages till then and was foolishly attempting to write a hundr...
I represent poor people, I represent working people. I represent senior citizens. I represent family businesses. I represent people who don't have the wherewithal to hire overpriced Washington lobbyists and lawyers. I want to send the powers back to ...
I was busy with my family, my budding career as a TV writer, my antipathy for the Los Angeles Lakers, and my general reluctance to engage in anything that might force me to leave my comfort zone. But sometimes ideas won't let you go. For me, educatin...
I don't see myself as a moviemaker only, you know? When I can do a picture, I do. But I don't work like a business, in pictures. I am not obliged to make one picture after the other in order to live.
There are pros and cons of experience. A con is that you can't look at the business with a fresh pair of eyes and as objectively as if you were a new CEO. Fire yourself on a Friday night and come in on Monday morning as if a search firm put you there...
That business of relaxation, which is so terribly modern today, is all good and well, but my work interests me so much, and is so varied, that many times it seems relaxing when I go from one aspect to another.
The business models in enterprise have changed pretty dramatically. A huge problem with enterprise software traditionally has been usually you sell to the customer and then they adopt the technology. The great thing about 'freemium' and the new way e...
Aaron Spelling always had his finger on the pulse of pop culture, he knew what the public wanted to see. He was one of the most loyal men in this business and believed in me at a time in my career when no one else would. My prayers are with his famil...
Of course I have the license to make up things, but I think a lot of what's written about China is misleading, and most Americans don't know much about China, in-depth, even though China is such a crucial business partner, rival, whatever.
My dad was an editor and a writer, and that's really where I would have liked to have gone. But the genetic link was not intact there, so I wound up going into business. But I love to write, still. I'm not a great writer, but I enjoy it.
American business would be run better today if there was more alignment between CEOs' interest and the company. For example, would the financial crisis of 2008 have occurred if the CEO of Lehman and Morgan Stanley and Goldman and Citibank had to take...
Being a competitor, you always believe you can come back. I'll be up at 3 in the morning watching World Cup races in my hotel whether I'm in Asia on a business trip or in New York City and have to get up in 2 hours.
The hardest thing as an actor is that you work really hard constantly for these roles, and you invest so much in it. And when they don't come to fruition and nobody sees them, there's a part of you that dies a little bit. It's like, 'Ah! But I worked...
I've always declined to speak about things I don't think are anybody's business, and what I always get from the interviewers is, 'Well, you know, we have to ask those things.' I say, 'Well, maybe you do, but I don't have to answer them.'
To some extent, the idea that rock 'n roll used to have this sort of free antediluvian identity, frolicking in the 1950s with Elvis or something, is totally wrong. It's insane. Elvis' relationship with Colonel Parker, his manager, was one of the most...
The biggest misconception people have about me is that when they see how young I am, they think, 'Oh, this guy must have always wanted to be in politics; his parents must have been politically connected.' I'm a finance major and always intended to go...
And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go ...
