I think companies over the last 10 years have done a very bad job of explaining to their employees what the intrinsic risks are. All I know is, if you wait until you let the employee go to deal with the issue of how do you communicate to the employee about being let go, it's too late to do anything.

Though I carry enough electronics to get nervous in a lightning storm, I love paper and I always have a Moleskine journal with me to capture notes, conversations and ideas.

My advice is don't use technology primarily to lower costs. Use technology to create new, effective ways of touching the market and creating new businesses and if you do that right, the cost savings will come.

Every day huge amounts of information break off like icebergs and melt away. What worries me is that much information in electronic form is never reduced to paper. Some people have described this as being on the edge of a digital Dark Age and fear we may commit a massive act of amnesia.

Google was the right set of people at the right time, and they ended up doing the right set of things. It's worth looking at how they are managed. They are network-oriented and allow a lot of flexibility and creativity.

Graphic designers are idea embalmers, loving undertakers preserving bits of data like to many butterflies pinned to felt in a jewel box.

The best way to let people go is to let them know when they're hired that it's an uncertain environment and that their job is always at risk and even if you let them go, it's not that you don't love them.