>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." >> today, "time" magazine unveiled their choice for person of the year. they have recognized the person

who most affected the news for good or ill and embodied what was important about the year. this year, it is a group of people, the ebola fighters. they are the doctors, scientists, and health workers battling a disease that is arctic taking more than 6000 lives -- has already taken more than 6000 lives. to talk about this issue i am pleased to have managing editor nancy gibbs at the table. let me read what you said. "not the glittering weapons fight the fight," says the proverb, "but whether the hero's heart fights the fight." --is truly true of

these are the heroes you're talking about. >> the courage it took for them to fight this fight. the risk to each of them individually and to their families was extraordinary. ebola is a dangerous disease because those who treat run the risk of becoming victims. we saw unprecedented numbers of doctors and nurses -- more than 300 have died fighting this outbreak. >> does it seem it, after you make the choice, obvious and easy? >> in a way. the more we thought about it we , decided a couple of months ago that this is how we are going to go. it became clearer and clearer as we talked to these people and heard their stories and watched what they are doing. it is against the context of a global health system that did not perform well and that is the crucial part. on the one hand, the

extraordinary heroism and courage of these front-line fighters that was all the more important because they are protecting the rest of us. it is not as though, in a globalized world, a pandemic is not able to travel further and faster than ever before. and so, if the disease surveillance systems do not work, if the alarms are not heeded, the entire world is at risk. these are the people that basically bought us time. >> and with that time, what are we doing? >> what is extraordinary is that in march and april, the front-line workers like the doctors without borders were yelling and screaming that this is different, this is serious, and they were being brushed off. they were accused of crying wolf. it took, frankly, dr. kent brantly, the western doctor, to be stricken himself and flown back to emory for the world to wake up. within a week of the evacuation,

the world bank allocated $20 million to the fight. the world health organization finally declared an emergency. it was months after the alarms had started sounding that this thing was really spreading uncontained. >> why were people like the world health organization late? >> they have lost funding and focus, and some part of it is turf battles, where regional offices are jealous of their primacy. the local office told the cdc to go away. you have a headquarters in geneva that cannot control what is happening on the ground and in the meantime, more and more people are getting affected. >> where are we on the progress to develop a vaccine? >> these are the other people we write about, scientists working on this for a decade. there are vaccines being fast tracked right now.

obviously, tragically we have , learned a lot about this disease and how it presents and what works in treating it. >> the crisis gives you a mirror into the disease? >> it does. and what's remarkable three of , the five people we feature on the covers are themselves survivors and in many cases they are donating plasma to help victims because it helps confer some kind of extra immunity. >> we will come back to the ebola fighters. number two of those considered were the ferguson protesters. what was the argument that said not now? >> what started in ferguson and has spread across the country and gathered momentum with the case of tamir rice in cleveland or eric garner in new york, we have started the long-standing conversation in this country about race and justice and accountability. it was those protests -- it was

not as though michael brown was the first black man to be killed by a police officer and yet, in this case, it became the center of a debate about police and the militarization of police and how these interactions go that has continued ever since that day in august. so we looked very hard, it is too soon to say what the long-term impact of the protest will be, i think what the protesters themselves say is that we are making people pay attention to something that has been a source of enormous pain within these communities for a long time. >> vladimir putin. >> the year started in sochi and the next thing you know, he is redrawing the map of eastern europe. and reasserting russian nationalism in a really have not seen in the post-cold war era, and violating norms of post-cold war diplomacy that i think most

people thought were settled and forcing the rest of europe and the rest of the world to think, what do we do with this guy? how do we draw the lines and what is our ability to enforce? >> why isn't isis on this list? isil? >> -- this is a force that is trying to create a state and is engaged in horrific violence. >> it is, and the vehicle for telling the story and addressing that we chose is actually the leader of the iraqi kurds who, arguably, holds the future of the region in his hands. he is right in the middle. >> you can find some defining centralization. >> he has a long line fighting against isis. how this plays out, and the future of iraq will have a lot to do with that. >> would you have a hard time putting isis on the cover as the person of the year?

>> i would have a hard time doing that. >> somebody who beheads americans -- >> when it comes to setting the priority, i go back to where we ended up, which is that as much as the individual acts of the ebola fighters mattered enormously, their looking forward at what we face as a global community and what we learned this year, look at the conversations that we had as a result of the ebola outbreak in this country. who is allowed to order someone to be quarantined? who was allowed to post a guard outside of your door? when chris christie quarantines kaci hickox, there was an enormous conversation.

there was conflict over who has authority. this is a disease that is not as infectious as an airborne pathogen would be. and so as a test run about our ability to face a threat like this we learned a lot from this. , if we did not learn or do not apply these lessons, we would miss an enormous opportunity at the cost of many lives. >> and it reminds us, reminds me that there are, out there, in the realm of global health, threats like ebola that we have not even come to appreciate. >> that's right. the very same globalization that makes it easier for us to unite in fighting a threat like this also makes the threat greater because it can travel more quickly. >> there are threats that we do not appreciate or understand yet. we are just getting to understand the power to multiply. >> ebola, remember, has been around for 40 years.

but it never functioned this way. even experts say it is behaving in ways that it has never done before. that is where it is an extraordinary danger. >> so why jack ma? >> the alibaba ipo was the largest in history. >> so? >> well, we will see, but he is in a position to remake global commerce that i think we will be paying a lot of attention to in years to come. you take an enormous market and link small businesses and merchants and suppliers in a frictionless way, and i think that is going to be a very different model than other e-commerce sites like amazon and it will be fascinating to see. this is someone you have been watching for years and i suspect you will have him back at this table. >> or i will be at his table in china, one or the other.

he does represent all that kind of stuff. why not taylor swift? >> we had her on the cover if you weeks ago as not only the biggest pop artist in the world, she is bigger than anyone, bigger than lady gaga or beyonce. but she also is a businesswoman where she has become a spokesperson for the value of content. and she pulled her music from spotify and said that i think that content needs to be valued, that artists need to be paid for their work, that is a debate that is happening across all different areas of media and she really put a flag in the ground. i think it will be fascinating to see the impact of that going forward. >> what was the last entertainer that was person of the year? >> it depends on how you count this, but i think 2004, we made bill and melinda gates and bono the persons of the year.

>> that was because of philanthropy. >> with bono it was the way that he leveraged his powers of -- as in entertainer to create philanthropy. >> can i show you these pictures? this is amazing. this is dr. jerry brown. tell us who this is. >> both of her parents died in a single week. they ran a medical clinic in monrovia. she is a nurse who counsels ebola patients and is a survivor herself so she is able to go into treatment centers and essentially give patients hope. she says, i got it i survived , it, you can survive it to, and the possibility of hope has enormous power. this is ella watson-stryker, a health educator who was on the ground from the very beginning in guinea and elsewhere, trying to educate the community as to how ebola spreads and get the word out, because you have to be able to keep people from

infecting each other. this is an ambulance driver, he runs an ambulance team in monrovia. also a survivor he contracted it , in trying to save a little boy. he says he would give his blood to save other people, which he does because it confers a benefit. and finally, kent brantley, a doctor at the same hospital as jerry brown. he, too, contracted the disease and came to emory. >> thank you. back in a moment. stay with us.

>> tonight a conversation with , walmart ceo doug mcmillon. walmart is the world's largest retailer but its dominance is under threat. consumers can find low prices online all the time. walmart is determined to catch up with the transformation in retail and with amazon. they are experimenting with delivery and store formats. since taking over in mcmillon february, has increased investment in e-commerce and he is the youngest ceo since sam walton founded the company. he spent his entire career at walmart and rose quickly through the ranks.

he led the international unit. we spoke with him at a busy walmart in washington, d.c. last week. here is that conversation. >> we just went through one part of the holiday season. what did we learn? >> one of the things that we learned from this black friday and thanksgiving is just how retail is changing so quickly. some of the themes i have talked about are really starting to become important. >> it is a transformation of the retail business. >> it is, no doubt. the internet has changed all kinds of business, and when you put that together with mobile, it is going to revolutionize retail even more and faster than maybe retail might have changed in the past. if you look at history, retailers come and go. you can list them. you go back 100 years in this country and retailers have grown and declined. in some cases, unique in our reasons. case, we are 52 years old. we have done a good job of

opening and operating stores to serve customers and to fill our purpose. but we have to learn new skills, many of which are digital, some of which are based on data and technology, and put them together in a way that is most efficient and serves customers in the way they want to be served. >> if you look at this past holiday, thanksgiving and friday and cyber monday, sales were down on black friday and up on cyber monday. >> to do to our plan, sales did bounce around, but if you look at what happened in november, for the first time, some of the efforts that retailers have made to spread the business out did start to take hold. i think the internet is related to it. >> people buying early. >> they can buy early, they can buy late. we had events thursday morning where you might have been preparing a meal and cyber , monday and the stores were cranking during thursday and friday. on we had over 22 million thursday visitors on thursday to walmart stores. over the weekend, people downloaded our black friday ad 25 million times.

we are seeing the customer engage with us in new ways and that is what i am referring to as transformation. mobile, which has been increasing in importance, surprised me even over the black friday weekend. 70% of the orders we received digitally came through a mobile device rather than the website. >> and that surprised you? >> it was higher than i would have guessed. >> how do you explain it? people are more familiar with mobile and they become more aware of how they can use it? they can take it to the store and see something in order it right there? >> customers are smart and are adopting new tools and technologies quickly. we have this tool we call savings catcher, and on our app, you can scan a receipt and we will look at local competition and let you know if we found any

lower prices and then give you that amount on a gift card. the customer adoption on that has been huge. everyone wants price insurance and we are the low-price leader so it makes sense for us to do that. >> you mentioned that people order online and pick it up themselves. what is behind that? what is the psychology at work? >> people are working in moving around and they do not want to sit at home and wait. they can save on freight if there is a freight charge. the u.k. is the best example. we have been delivering groceries to homes for 15 years in the u.k. and that is something that in this country people are interested in and i think is going to be more important in the future. in the u.k., we have 90% of our sales in the store. we have been adding a pickup ability in the parking lot and

drive-throughs and parking at tube stations to meet people on their way home from work. what we are learning is that customers do not want to break stride. they are going home from work, but they pull in and pick it up. sometimes i want to go to the store and sometimes i want it delivered. what we have to do is build capability so that however a customer wants to shop. >> what does that mean for the size of the stores you are building? >> great question. if you look at our supercenters in the united states, they grew to where we were building some that were over 20,000 square feet. a few years ago we recognized and started adjusting them down to a smaller size. >> you did that because you did not need those kinds of stores because people were shopping online? >> we just found out how big was too big. some customers do not want to walk all that far.

so there is a kind of natural adjustment that is taking place over time. as i look forward i am confident that great stores will still be important to the customer but they will probably get smaller and they will continue to have and turning goods but other items you will order online and pick up later. >> what do we know about shoppers? have you seen a decline in impulse shoppers because now they have so much more access to information and they can plan more? >> that is an interesting point. some people do say that online shopping does not enable him shopping does not enable spontaneous shopping. and i just do not think that is true. people still are people and they want to find a new item, they want to find some and that is exciting. they are still interested in instant gratification. sometimes they will be in the store and other times they will browse online.

>> tell me more. is the profile of the shopper changing in terms of who comes to walmart and who shops online? >> the u.s. demographic is basically the walmart customer in the united states. we look very much like that set of statistics in every way. we have a mid-lower income, lower income shoppers, and everybody is value conscious, which includes wealthy people who shop at walmart for some things. >> does it change your products? does your offering change because of the profile of the shopper? for example, higher-priced items. >> think about the ability online to sell a broader assortment. in the beginning, when the internet started taking hold, it was the above average income consumer but that has passed.

>> where is walmart going? for example, i am told you are getting involved in selling gasoline. you cannot sell gasoline online. you cannot ship gasoline to someone. they have to come to the store to pick it up. what is the market for that? >> we operate fuel stations at some of our stores and we are able to sell customers value. we love to let people know that we are the low-price leader. we try to do that with our soft drink machines on the front of the store as well. fuel, pharmacy, fresh fruit, categories like that and people to the store. >> who is your competition? >> it seems like everybody. the one person who i know wins is the customer. the sharper we have to be.

going back to sam walton, in our dna is being interested in others and talking good ideas. >> when you talk about walmart, everybody is speculating on the competition between walmart and amazon. it is said that that is the company that you look at and see the most competitive force at play. it is said that you have given every executive of your company a copy of the biography. >> we believe in learning from other people. what amazon is doing and jeff is doing is showing the world what is possible. i admire that. having the ability to innovate

and imagine what is possible and to have the speed to get there is, frankly, very common and understood within walmart. >> what do they do? >> customer focused, moving with speed, just putting ideas at work that are directly beneficial to customers. >> the irony of this is that he studied sam walton, jeff bezos and now you are studying jeff bezos. >> we're trying to learn from someone, learn from competition, and on a global basis be able to be the very best as we try to bring it all together. to me, that is what is most exciting about being at walmart. i am confident that the things that we have done that built this business still largely apply in the future. there are other things that will make us more successful. >> but that is e-commerce? >> it is the marriage of both. if you look around the store, we edit assortments.

we have a great team of merchants that take the category and really understands it, works with the suppliers to come with the best items. that duration process or editing process will still apply online. will still apply at some point online. today, everybody is talking about access to tens of millions of items and how broad it is. well, definitely, in the future, customers will have access to more than they would have years ago. but the ability to be a merchant and show customers what they want next before they might even it, is stillt going to matter. we have that in our dna and i think that will help us. >> you are building fufillment centers and they have fufillment centers. apple has stores, there is talk

of google having stores. in future retail, will we see a combination of e-commerce and bricks and mortar? >> i think that is what the customer wants and therefore yes. it is that integration of how you put it together that results in the lowest prices and the broadest assortment and customer service that is above their expectations, that is the winning formula and it has always been the winning formula. how we do it will be different. as a customer, you may get on your mobile phone and tell us you want to come by and pick something up at 5:00 and come through the drive-through next to the store. or in some cases, not at the store. we open the store, we just have one, in arkansas, that you cannot come in and shop.

it is just a pickup point. you order on your mobile device or website and you schedule a time slot and tell us and you come through and pick it up. guess who loves it? mom loves it. she may have a child in the car seat or other pressing issues to take care of. there will be times when she wants to come into the store, pick up her own tomato. she might want to look around and see what is new. there are other times where we will save her time. >> you have been candid in terms of interviews i've read and seen . what worries you the most in terms of your own performance? in terms of margin, terms of the challenges you have to meet? >> in some ways, it is pretty simple. we have to be great at the things we have always done. in stock at store level needs to

be excellent all the time. our associates have to be friendly and talk to customers and appreciate them being there. and today we are hiring data scientists, hiring mathematicians. >> because you have so much data available now. you have to analyze it so it instructs you as to what the future will be. >> the future will be different so one of our biggest challenges is how do we keep the things that we have been great and continue to get better at and then add on these new capabilities so we bring it all together and we are the ones? >> you spent a fair amount of time in san bernardino. what is there? >> talent, people. i am pleased with the team we have in california driving the initiatives. we are learning about how customers shop with mobile devices, building capabilities

learning about how customers to think about pricing online. when you think about pricing in the store, it is not practical to change a price every day. customers want everyday low price. online, prices move more frequently. what does that mean to us, and how do we learn to build trust with customers so they know that they do not need to shop anywhere else? >> it is said that amazon has been instructive in going from everyday pricing to dynamic pricing, that that was a clear case where you looked at what amazon was doing. deal of the day or bargain of the day. and said, this is something we ought to look closely at. >> the reality is that we study all others that are relevant in this country and others, trying to learn. ultimately, what we are trying to do is make sure that the cost enables us to sell for less and that our customers believe that we do that. customers need to be able to believe in us for low prices,

breadth of assortment, and friendliness of employees. >> what are you going to do in health care? >> we have done a lot in health care and i do not think people know. we have a great offering for associates. it is flexible. is $21 ang price point pay period, 20% cheaper than what the average retail employee pays. we cover over one million lives in this country. we have felt cost pressure because we have more people sign up but i am proud of what we offer in terms of health care. what i hope is that the country, the medical profession, the government, and others, will work on increasing efficacy and make sure we're getting cost out.

if you look at the u.s. health care system, it has room to improve. >> how would you improve it? >> in some cases, it needs to be run more like a business. take care of doctors. continue to invest in r&d and the next thing that needs to be created. but we need to find a way to get rid of bureaucracy and i hope that happens. >> does health care add traffic at your stores? >> without associates that are happy and able to focus on business, the customers will not have a good experience. >> you would like everyone to earn at least minimum wage? >> higher than minimum wage. around the world we have 2.2 million associates. in the u.s., 1.3 million. we have less than 6000 today that make the federal minimum wage. >> out of how many? >> 1.3 million. we will create changes were no walmart employee makes federal minimum wage, will be head of

that with the starting wage. there will be states where the minimum wage is higher than federal minimum wage, and we will pay the statesman wage, but we are trying to create a ladder. you can see this in walmart. a meritocracy. >> you come to work in walmart, you see not only where the entry-level is the where you might be. you continue to say that. >> that is one of the things that attracted me to the company and that i know attracts many others. when you think about the investment we can make in people. how we allocate that is interesting. you can spend some money on health care, you can spend some money on the starting wage, you can invest money when people get promoted so they get an increase. you can give people an increase when they get their evaluations. we have a profit-sharing based on store performance, associates can earn a bonus, which is important. you want to have an incentive. the decisions we make our to

invest in those different areas so that we create a meritocracy, an opportunity to do more. >> this is a place you believe there is a difference between the perception and the reality of walmart? why does this perception exist? >> in the world, there is a debate over inequity. sometimes we get caught up in that. retailers in general. , but we could not run a good business if we do not take care of people and have compensation plans that work. sometimes, people want to talk about the bad news and not the good news. it is hard to get a good story. you can walk around the store -- and i would encourage you to do that while you are here -- and talk to the associates, we opened the store a year ago, this is my third or fourth time here. >> what do you say to them when you come? >> how are things going. >> are you listening as much as you're talking? >> sure. asking questions. they are proud of their jobs, proud of the opportunity that walmart represents, and that is

the vast majority of the straight up truth. >> if there is a gap between perception and reality, doesn't that suggest that you are doing a poor job of communicating who walmart is? >> we can do a better job at that. it is important to understand why. when we started the company, there were two stakeholders. sam walton and our predecessors were focused on -- customers and associates. >> your employees and the people that come into your stores. >> if you take care of associates, customers will be happy. but at some point we became big. i don't know when that magic point was, but it happened. and society started looking at the company and saying, we expect more from you. and so we had lots of stakeholders to think about, not just a couple. again, i will credit lee scott.

lee started opening up the conversation, and you may remove -- remember that when you spoke to him he said something like "we decided to listen to our critics and instead of trying to dispute or argue or debate, we started listening and asking, what can we do to make this a better company?" so we embraced environmental sustainability and started making it a better company and i think we got some credit for that for a period of time from a reputation point of view. it is a never-ending part of my responsibility and the leaders of walmart to let people know who we really are. >> you must also know that at the scale that you operate you are a disruptive force. in a community. on the one hand you offer jobs , and a place for people to buy inexpensively but at the , same time you drive small businesses who cannot compete because of your pricing force which gives you the opportunity

to do things. because jeff bezos will admit, acknowledge, that amazon is a disruptive force. >> first of all, i am very proud of our purpose. our purpose is to save people money so that they can live better. customers. we want you to shop at walmart and use your savings to help pay for your kids college education or make a house payment or buy a car if you can make the first payment, that is a meaningful purpose that i think add value to society. over time, markets adjust, and competition is a good thing. merchants change a business to create their own future. or other changes -- i think that is good for society. >> what's talk about international. india had opposition to retailers coming in and competing with local retailers. where is walmart today and what is the future in india for

walmart? >> india is an incredible country. i have been there quite a few times and i am enthusiastic about what india will become over time. we had a joint venture in retail, it did not work out partially because of the rules that the government wants to have in place for political reasons. today, we have 20 cash and carry units that service small businesses and they are doing well. we have a strong team there, small but mighty, and we will be patient and build the cash and carries. at some point, india may open up, and that would be great. i think they need it, because they need a supply chain investment. too much produce is going to waste. supply chain is not intact and the food we can help. >> china? >> china is an amazing opportunity, we have 400 stores

and an e-commerce business based in shanghai. i have been going to china for 20 years and i think that our opportunity in china to build a retail business is unprecedented other than in the united states. and i think it is really important. >> but why is that, other than the size of the population? >> that is the primary reason. just a lot of people that need access to goods that are safe. food safety is a huge issue in china. and they also need a value. >> there is a fellow there named jack ma, that i am sure you know. >> we met once. >> he has huge ambitions for alibaba. he is in the e-commerce business as well. how do you see the challenge from them? he wants to be here as you want to be in china. >> i think, again, competition is good. >> bring it on? >> alibaba or amazon, we will do

our best to learn from them and not be stuck. let's talk about change for a second. walmart has always changed a lot, all the way back to sam. he changed things at a fast pace. we still have to be fast. inside the company it still feels small, but whether it is alibaba or amazon, one of the things that they teach us is that speed is really important. i think that is important for us to be able to move the speed without losing who we are. we have core values that matter to us as associates that will stand the test of time but almost anything else should be open to change. >> define what you mean by speed. how best to order and you can have it in your hand, or something else? >> let's say that there is a new capability that we figure out the customers want on the mobile device.

how long does it take to get that done? -- if one ofre is it is not selling, we have to flip it out. we cannot become bureaucratic or slow. >> if that is central to success, what is central to the success of walmart in the future? >> beyond the cultural stuff, which matters, along with speed, risk-taking. we started with one store. we were entrepreneurs. now we are older. 52 years old. it is every bit as important to me to be entrepreneurial in our approach. we have to have people who are willing to take a risk, a well-thought-out risk not . not everything is going to work. -- not everything is going to work. i was talking to sheryl sandberg and we have been to facebook trying to learn from them about speed and culture and think about how that applies to

walmart. cheryl was explaining that if they want to create something new, they might assign two or three teams to deliver it. when the first team fails, they celebrate. they clap, have a cake, say thank you for figuring out that that does not work. now let's focus on the other two ways. we have to be like that. we have to be able to celebrate some failures and be able to recover. >> what failures can you celebrate? >> items that did not sell, tools that were not adopted for customers. we have to invent some things. >> what are the biggest bets that walmart has made? is it countries, like japan? was that a mistake? >> japan was not a mistake. we did exit germany and south korea. >> japan is a success? quite the market is not growing as fast as we want, but it is the third biggest market in the

world and our team is in a great job growing sales and improving profitability. >> what is the impact of the recession? >> customers became more value conscious and that was in our favor. >> what happened in germany? >> we were early and we all knew what we knew so we tried to take too much of walmart u.s. and install it in germany. and there were issues. the stores that we bought were not the best stores. we did not do a great job of assessing the situation and running it afterwards. what is good is that we learn from it, made a decision to exit, moved onto the next thing. international business has turned out to be great. >> what are the lessons of mexico and the investigation? >> i am really pleased with the way that we typically respond to a challenge and this one is no exception. the work that we have done over the last few years to improve compliance has been good for the company. >> is this a risk that goes with the landscape?

if you are dealing with >> no. this kind of money? with thisare dealing kind of money? >> no. for us, it starts with talent. we needed expertise. i am talking about 12 or 13 dimensions, not just permits but everything from food safety to how we handle data, data security. what we have done is add the subject matter expertise, number one talent, improve process, improve system. and we all feel really good as to where we are at from a compliance point of view and that we have made some much progress. it is a journey and we have work to do, but i think we have responded appropriately. >> and wages in those countries? >> similar story. we want to have a situation where we are paying above market to get the talent we want and create an opportunity to become managers. in the u.s., 76% of the management came from our hourly ranks. being a walmart store manager is a great job, highly compensated.

around the world and in every country we want those principles to apply. >> how does a modern ceo to only take his company into the future as you are doing by looking at the competition and learning and analyzing the data, but also by saying we want to play an important role within the society that we live in, whether it is domestic or foreign, the question is, how do you do that, and how much of a sense of your own responsibility as a leader is that? >> growing up within the company and knowing how our board feels about it, how the management team feels about it, causes me to feel empowered to have a long-term view. it causes us of the leadership team to know that we have -- as

a leadership team to know that we have the support to do what is right. we have a great management team, the team is really strong. one person does not do it, it is a team that leads this company. and we are supported to think about things like environmental sustainability and reset three big goals a while back. to eliminate waste. today, 80% of the waste generated by stores is being recaptured and we have eliminated it. we made it a goal to be supplied by renewable energy and we have made great progress in this country and mexico and others in being able to do that. we have the largest on-site solar in the country because of how we use the rooftops, in the neighborhood of 20% renewable already. we decided to engage in the supply chain and care about not only the products do things like , trying to eliminate packaging when we can or take water out so that freight is less, but also

to get involved. how the people that work in factories or producing products are treated. we care about whether people are getting paid overtime, we inspect factories and partner with associations to make sure things are becoming sustainable over time. i do not know if we are going fast enough, but i can really see the scale of the company being applied for good. it is one of the reasons i love working for walmart. >> when you look at growth domestically, is it mostly urban? >> i would start with e-commerce. the physical locations that we need, where we put them in how many we have, what size they are, that all can be rethought going forward because of what is going on with mobile.

>> you are involved in litigation with a well-known american entertainer who was injured in a collision. what do you say to his fans and people who have rallied to his side because of the tragedy that befell him? >> i would, first of all, say to the mcnair family how sorry we are about their loss. and to tracy morgan and everyone involved, we feel very bad about what happened and i tried to say we want to take responsibly for it and do what is right. that is what we are trying to do and i hope to have that resolved. >> you hope it will be resolved without going to trial? >> can i say one more thing? our truck drivers do a great job. we have a private fleet. it has a lot of pride while this . incident is tragic, we take them seriously, and if our truck drivers were standing around,

they would want you to know that they care a lot. this impacted all of us. >> was he just too tired? this driver? >> i can't talk about the individual circumstance. i just want you to know that our people care about it. >> because colleagues care about colleagues and because you care about doing the right thing. looking at the future, back to product mix, i mentioned health care, i was thinking about not just health care plans but also the kind of products. there is talk about not only selling gasoline, call and collect and all of that, but you are offering health care to people outside of walmart. you are offering banking to people outside of walmart, to your customers. correct? >> we partner with someone else. we are not actually a bank in this country but we offer financial services.

>> are there other areas where we will be surprised that walmart can go there because it has the resources to provide a better product? >> if we think we can add value and our customers want it, we will try to provide that service to them. there are basically three service areas in this country that we are focused on. one is financial services, another would be health and wellness. our pharmacy offering, our optical offering, and third, entertainment. digital entertainment. we own a company called vudu. those are the three areas. >> beyond your own teaching, what you learn from your customers and competitors, where else do you go to make sure that you are a fully informed and enlightened ceo?

>> what you read matters, and i try to pay attention to what i am taking in in that way. other ceos have been help. -- helpful. >> including walmart ceos? >> mike is still involved in helping very much. lee scott, he is a mentor. but i have reached out to other ceos. when steve ran pepsico, i called him and asked for advice. american express, i called recently to ask them about a couple of things. >> what do you ask them? >> leading change is the topic. >> it is the broad question rather than specific is this -- business problems. >> right. we probably know the retail business as well as anyone, but from a leadership point of view, i am learning a lot.

>> at your age and your experience, what are the qualities and experiences that you think are important for you to take this company into a period of transformation? because of the internet, because the fact that countries around the world have an emerging middle class with the demand for the products that you sell? >> i think, in my role, and with the leadership team that i work with, we need to have a vision. where are we trying to go and why are we trying to get there? i think our vision has evolved and is becoming clearer. >> tell me it what that is. >> there are things about walmart that need to be repeated because we have some inherently strong qualities. the way that i described it

within the company is that our purpose will stand the test of time. we save people money so they can live better. our values, respect for the individual serving the customer, , striving for excellence, and doing it with integrity. those i believe will stand the test of time. i thought about that a lot, especially being in the international business to last years. four most all of our cultural behaviors as a company hang under one of those four core values. for our people, they need to know what is constant. if they are going to lead us to change, help anchor us on what it is that stays the same. the list of things that stays the same is relatively short. purpose, values. the vision going forward is to use the capabilities that are possible today, digital and physical, to exceed customer expectations in a way that no one else can. that is what sam walton would do. we know that because that is

what he did before. he changed all the time. our stores did not stay the same. there was not a moment where he and the leaders looked at the stores and said, we are perfect. we are done. that never happened and that is not happening now. >> thank you. >> thank you. i appreciate the time. ♪ ♪ ♪

>> from pier three in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west" where we cover innovation, technology, and the future of business. i'm emily chang. a check of your bloomberg top headlines. oil hasn't been this cheap since july 2009. the price of a barrel fell below $60 today. the slide came after saudi arabia questioned the need to cut production. with that in mind, for -- former transportation security ray lahood says now is the time to raise the gas tax. >> america became number one in infrastructure. we built the golden gate bridge, the hoover dam, the interstate system using the big pot of money funded tgh