A good company delivers excellent products and services, and a great company does all that and strives to make the world a better place.

When I joined Ford, in the late 1970s, I felt strongly we could not forever be a huge user of natural resources without there being consequences. But I was alone in my thinking in those days.

I never wanted Ford to be a place, like the tobacco industry, where our employees were not proud of coming to work for us. I felt there was a danger of that, should we be marginalized as a major polluter.

I walked in and inherited a management group that I didn't know very well. They didn't know me, and we had a very short window to put together a credible recovery plan.

It's amazing how much data is out there. The question is how do we put it in a form that's usable?

I believe very strongly that corporations could and should be a major force for resolving social and environmental concerns in the twenty-first century.

Creating a strong business and building a better world are not conflicting goals - they are both essential ingredients for long-term success