“For the past few years we have consciously and continuously fed the core game audience and now we are reaching that inflection point where we have to reach out to the mainstream consumer and bring them into the Xbox 360 … And what really is appealing to that mainstream consumer is that social experience, in the living or online. Whether it’s the older consumer or the Facebook generation, they see games not as a solitary experience but as something you do with friends and family, and that what we want o to deliver this fall.” David Hufford, Director, Xbox Product Management, Microsoft | New York Times 16 July 2008

Jim Stengel stepped down as chief marketing officer at Proctor and Gamble, the world’s largest consumer good firm and the world’s largest advertiser.

“Being global marketing officer at P&G is like being a manager without portfolio — lots of responsibility and not much authority.” Dave Hardie, Managing Director, Herbert Mines Associates, a management recruitment firm | Wall St. Journal 16 July 2008

“Under Mr. Stengel, P&G has gradually increased its spending on digital media around the world, such as … beinggirl.com social networking site. But the company has also responded to the decline of in TV audiences in the US with an increased focus on in-store marketing, and traditional newspaper inserts featuring money-off coupons … [His replacement, Marc Pritchard, formerly president of strategy, productivity, and growth in P&G] has worked alongside Mr. Stengel over the past two year to create “new brand franchise leaders” to oversee all aspects of marketing and development of new brands.” Jonathan Birchall, journalist | Financial Times 16 July 2008

“This is the biggest launch of my career.” Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple, on the launch of the AppStore that resells third-party software for iPhones and iPod Touch players | USA Today 10 July 2008

“When IBM introduced the PC, it was good, but it didn’t take off until people started discovering the software … The breadth of the applications dramatically differentiates the iPhone from competing smart phones such as the Treo and Blackberry. The games are what you’d find on a computer … You’ll end up with PC-class applications that fit in your pocket.” Tim Bajarin, Analyst, Creative Strategies | USA Today 10 July 2008

“Having an application on the device — instead of going to a website to use it — makes it quicker, more robust experience … You do more of the work on the device than over the Net, so the load time should be quicker.” Chris DeWolfe, CEO, MySpace.

“If you’re chasing your audience, you’re chasing yourself around in circles. You’re much better off with an aesthetic and a vision-following it and explaining to people what you’re doing”. Graham Vintner, Bonny Doon Vineyards | Inc Magazine, July 2008

“For a while, we had various MBA class studies of Bonny Doon. One class report said, ‘You guys don’t realize it but the image you project resonates 100% with young, Internet-savvy experimenters who don’t trust authority, are irreverent of everything, and don’t want to be marketed to. We accidentally ran into 25 million people.‘” Graham Vintner, Bonny Doon Vineyards | Inc Magazine, July 2008

“There’s one way to be rational about money and many, many ways to be irrational.” Dan Ariely, Professor of Behavioral Economics and author, Predictably Irrational, Duke University | New York Times, 5 July 2008

“We pretend that a debit card is the same as cash. But in reality, it has a hidden danger, which is that we will spend more when we use plastic than when we have cash.” Mary Hunt, Editor, debtproofliving.com | New York Times, 5 July 2008

“If we want to buy a new car, we don’t think, ‘I won’t be able to buy 700 books and take two weeks of vacation’…People who are on an hourly wage do this the best. If someone gets $20 an hour, they can do a direct trade-off with labor-to get a new bicycle, I’ll have to work 20 hours.” Dan Ariely, Professor of Behavioral Economics and author, Predictably Irrational, Duke University | New York Times, 5 July 2008

“People may buy things they don’t need or want to attain free shipping.” David R. Bell, Associate Professor of Marketing, the Wharton School UPenn | New York Times, 5 July 2008

“If we did not have online organizing tools, it would be much harder to be where we are now.” Chris Hughes, Founder of Facebook | New York Times, 7 July 2008

“One of my fundamental beliefs from my days as a community organizer is that real change comes from the bottom up…and there’s no more powerful tool for grassroots organizing than the Internet.” Barack Obama, Democratic Presidential Nominee | New York Times, 7 July 2008

“The handset makers are on a treadmill, trying to turn out hardware every six months that’s innovative and thinner, with bigger displays and lower costs, all having to do the systems integration. The net result is no innovation. They do not have time. And you know what? We make really good software. We can take on all that work.” Andy Rubin, Director, Mobile Computing, Google | Wired, July 2008

“Symbian…will indisputably be the most attractive platform for mobile innovation…Nokia is strongly positioned to realize the benefits of open innovation, as well as accelerating time to market, enabling us to meet and exceed customer expectations for leading converged devices and experiences”. Olli-Pekka Kallusvo, CEO, Nokia | Financial Times, 25 June 2008

“That phone you’re carrying around, we think of it as a phone, but it’s really a computer, right? We’ve learned from computers that its really nice to have complete connectivity, to be able to connect anything in a kind of open way, we’ve also learned that it’s really nice to be able to run any application you want to run, also in an open way. For a lot of people and a lot of time during your life, the phone is your main computing platform. We look at those technologies and say wow, we can do a whole lot more.” Larry Page, Co-Founder, Google | Wired, July 2008

“You have a significant challenge in mobile, in that the screens are much smaller, so you can’t display nearly as much advertising, or take as much space. On the other hand, you have much more relevant and timely information, like what location the person may be in, so on balance, that leaves me quite optimistic.” Sergey Brin, Co-Founder, Google | Wired, July 2008

“The goal [of Android, Google's mobile phone software platform] to build a killer app, then monetize it later.” Andy Rubin, Director, Mobile Computing , Google | Wired, July 2008

“People can debate how long it will take us, but I have a hundred percent confidence that we will eventually get there”. Larry Page, Co-Founder, Google | Wired, July 2008