David Cote

Chairman and CEO, Honeywell

Strategy & growth
"We’ve certainly seen much more innovation coming from outside the US. Ten years ago, less than 40 percent of our sales were outside the US. Today it’s approximately 55 percent. We’ve grown from a $22-billion company to a $37-billion company. You don’t do that by simply taking US products and selling them somewhere else. You have to innovate, design, manufacture, and source locally to be successful anywhere. For instance, we talk about the need to develop products in India and China, for sales both in those countries and in other markets, including the US."
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Michael Thaman

Chairman of the Board and CEO, Owens Corning

Operations
"Much of our R&D efforts have been devoted to looking at core manufacturing processes, which we have developed over the last 70 years. We’re stepping back from those and rethinking. Where is the most productive capital in our processes? How do we re-engineer those processes to get more bang for the buck? How do we produce low-cost, high-quality products with smaller capital footprints and smaller footprints in the market? We’ve been quite successful at that, so we actually believe that our developing-country strategy is giving us manufacturing technologies and insights that we can then take back to our existing, bigger-scale facilities in developed markets in the Americas or Western Europe."
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Douglas R. Oberhelman

Chairman and CEO, Caterpillar Inc.

Talent
"As we expand around the globe, one-size-fits-all will not work. For example, Chinese leadership and needs are so different from those in India, Brazil, Canada, and Belgium. Talent has to be regionally directed, and that’s what we’re working on. Frankly, it’s a big challenge, because as we’re new to some of these places and our growth is strong, we’re having trouble teaching what we want our leaders to do and know."
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Michael White

Chairman, President and CEO, DIRECTV

Innovation
"In the US, because it’s such a mature, highly competitive market, we’re working much more on TV Everywhere, product differentiation, mobility, and other initiatives. Whereas in Latin America, having a more affordable product is still a big innovation in and of itself. And we learn from each other. For example, our Brazil business is much better than our US business on customer service and being customer-centric as an organisation, in the way they’ve designed their products and run their business model. The trick is to make sure that both organisations get to see what the other is doing, take the best, and then adapt it."
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Dominic J. Frederico

President and CEO, Assured Guaranty Ltd

Risk
"We constantly look at what we’re learning from today’s experience and adjust our views of the future in terms of what business we can write, what business we can engineer the risk out of where there’s a reasonable prospect we could take the risk at a reasonable premium and make a profit."
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Roger W. Ferguson, Jr.

President and CEO, TIAA-CREF

Sustainability
"There are a number of ways in which our broader interests in socially responsible investing and corporate governance have manifested themselves. We have one of the largest and oldest socially responsible investment options in the world – the CREF Social Choice Account – which reached its 20th anniversary and topped $10 billion in assets in 2010. We have also recently been involved in major investments in the agricultural sector, and we’ve made sure that these investments reflect our commitment to sustainability, transparency, and accountability. A third example is our longstanding leadership role in corporate governance. We believe that many of our participants value being associated with a company that puts a great deal of focus on corporate governance."
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F. William McNabb III

Chairman, President and CEO, The Vanguard Group, Inc

Regulation
"The most important thing right now for governments to do in terms of stability is to develop long term, credible fiscal plans. The US, for example, can’t continue to run the kinds of deficits it has built up over a long period of time. Now, that’s not to say that you have to solve the problem in the next 24 or 36 months, but there needs to be a plan in place that actually addresses the long term structural issues that exist. In terms of other policy elements that need to be in place, the single biggest is the lack of jobs. And where is job creation going to come from? There could be more thought given to training, with the focus on education, and where to invest to create the next generation of jobs."
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Richard O’Brien

President and CEO, Newmont Mining Corporation

Governance
"The new normal is more engagement with communities and governments and with my own employees around the world. Over the last year my time has changed pretty dramatically. When I became CEO at Newmont, about five years ago, I spent a great deal of time understanding our operations and what we could do to improve them. I spent time building our management capability. So when I look back at my calendar compared to a couple of years ago, it’s much more externally facing, more strategically oriented. As a CEO, that’s the right place for me to be."
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