For Sony, owning a studio is a gamble and probably a pretty good one, now that in the broadband era having content is a great advantage when you sell devices that in a ubiquitous world of distribution can actually show programs, movies, content directly to the consumer. So that you actually create, in a digital world, real synergy.

I have to determine whether the joy of craplets is worth preserving.

The hardest thing about being at Sony was not the travel; it was being divorced from the public and private life I had in New York. Travelling as much as I did, while I didn't lose connection with my friends, I lost a sense of belonging.

Frankly, I was surprised at how generous the Japanese press has been to the idea of a foreigner running Sony.

When color TV arrived, it just sat there and you saw color. I've been to retail stores where there were no 3-D glasses at all and the 3-D images were all blurred. People were coming in and saying, "I don't want to buy that." There's a lot of marketing connected to introducing technologies and especially introducing new experiences.

Sometimes Hollywood is a small town on the West Coast of America at the furthest point from everywhere else, and that can make it a little provincial and insular.

I was very short. Everybody else was two years older in my class, and I had curly hair and was teacher's pet.