We asked them to provide a prospective view of what they see ahead for their company or sector.

why does a 67-year-old guy who got his start running an athletic shoe company… think he can enter a field famous for gobbling up fortunes?

Succession at any company is challenging, and unfortunately the expectations that Bill and I and others had when he joined the company a year ago didn't play out as we had hoped. I want to personally thank Bill for his dedication and commitment over the past year.

Ultimately, we wanted Nike to be the world's best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don't end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.

If you didn't have a record company or a PR company that was really out there pushing you then you couldn't get to them, so everything drifted away. Then the internet comes along, and all of a sudden, you have this central place where anyone, anywhere in the world can type Gary Numan into a search engine and find me and find out what's going on.

We have no layoff targets and no company-wide numbers. We never announce overall layoffs because we don't plan for them across GE. We leave it up to individual businesses to decide what actions are necessary to meet their objectives. However, it's clear we'll need fewer jobs at GE because of redundancies from the Honeywell acquisition, the Montgomery Ward bankruptcy, modest volume-related reductions and GE's digitization activities.