lisa: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek". i'm here in the new york headquarters. in this week's special interview issue, we talked to some of the top people in business. head of i.b.m. talks about where she sees the company positioning itself in the a.i. revolution. we talk to the head of microsoft about where this company will go in its middle-age, and we talked to beatles great ringo star and why that band benefited by not being part of the digital revolution. that all ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

lisa: i am here with the assistant manager of bloomberg businessweek, jim ellis. jim, you are the brainchild behind this edition. you came one all these ideas of who to get and how to frame this. what was your thinking behind this issue? jim: well, i knew if i was going to do this i wanted to do it with people who i wanted to hear from, and so when i thought get all ofcan i these people from billionaires to public officials and regular people together, the best way to do that was change. everybody sort of responds to change whether it's a change in their business, politics, so i used that is my trigger and that is what led me to put the big changes were whether in business, the cloud, the public life, the big change on politics and changes with the way life is

which is why i got alicia garza from black lives matter. we can gethange behind is the idea of a three-day workweek. carlos seem to advocate. >> that was an interesting interview because so many people want to talk to carlos about being the richest man in the+++ world, but instead, he has unusual view that we should only

work three days a week. the reason is, the free such so many more jobs. he is really worried about this notion that there are, that productivity is growing stagnant and more more people are going to be deemed unnecessary, and so his idea is, if you basically cut on the workweek, you can prolong retirement for somebody people and they make up money that they spent by having extra workers and not having to pay retiree benefits were -- for much longer. lisa: you also spoke to one of them british innovators. >> he is the big brain. he is in charge of the company google bought for half $1 billion to basically get the smartest people in artificial intelligence under their belt. what they are trying to do is figure out how to get machines to learn. it is amazing. they are basically looking for ways to make machines intelligent and that will change the way many things that we do happen. i mean, basically that will free us up to do other things. i don't know whether that's eating bonbons or whatever. but they have the team of researchers there trying to figure out how the human brain works and can you put it in a machine? lisa: fascinating. so maybe you have to only make the bed a couple times and then the leadleave out cover story, head of ibm.

what did you think of the interview? jim: i thought it was interesting because with ginni, i.b.m. is the ultimate technology company. it has been a technology for over 100 years from back in the day when scales were considered technology, and it is interesting because unlike facebook and google, she sort of use idms producing technology that is more serious, that you come therefore apply technology that allows for life-changing things like keeping the air traffic control systems in flow, keeping banking systems together. it is a piece of everything, and now with their initiative toward artificial intelligence with things like watson, it is preparing for the future. yet again, it is reinventing itself. lisa: i spoke with matt chapman who did the interview. this is what he had to say. matt: she joined as an engineer in their detroit office working on banking and insurance stuff

in the early 1980's. she kind of worked her way up and was promoted in 2012 to the big role. lisa: ginni rometty has been with the company for 25 years and this is an old company especially compared with the googles and facebooks of the world. how are they trying to compete or are they? max: i.b.m. is 105 years old and what they are doing is trying to be a little bit more start up's. i spoke to ginni in an sort of open-plan building in downtown manhattan and not what you think about when you think of i.b.m. they are marketing this ai thing which is watson and you have seen commercials where he is talking to bob dylan and various other celebrities. they are trying to be cool, i guess. when you asked her about

her political position in the selection which was incredibly polarized, especially in light of meg whitman, a republican candidate coming out for hillary clinton. you think there is any chance she could change of you? >> i doubt it. she is very definitive. i asked who she was going to vote for and she said, ibm works with all leaders, and that kind of makes sense because they are a global company and they come with have to get along with everybody. i do think if she were to endorse, it will be a big thing. just as yet another sort of prominent business leader getting into the fray. i think it is very unlikely. she brought up are so saying ibm have been there for 100 years and he worked with everybody and so is kind of like in a special mess and if they are not willing to weigh in there, it is hard to see how she would weigh in in our own election. lisa: i was struck by this

feeling as i read your fantastic interview about how she kind of use ibm is the grown-up company, any good way, not in a sort of pejorative way, but and she said people from google and facebook want to have an impact on serious things. what are the serious things? max: it's an interesting spin because i.b.m. is still building these back office things for like delta airlines but the point of view she is saying is you could work at google and work on an app or move jet planes around. that's interesting pitch. the other thing, this cognitive computing platform, if it plays out it could be bigger than siri. her view is siri and alexa and these kind of natural language processors are not that impressive compared to what they have cooking. although what they have cooking is not yet in very many consumer

products. lisa: there are so many photographs of top people in business in this issue. we spoke with a photo editor to talk about what it was like to be in the room taking pictures with them. >> she has a great team around of and they were very sort conscience of how we were going to represent her being a woman ceo and also because of our previous stories have been a little bit more critical of ibm in the company. they were a little hesitant, and so i think initially it was hard and then once she got there, i andk she was really warm amenable to being photographed. we got some really nice natural responses from her. lisa: what did they want her to come across as as a female? what were they going for? >> i think it is always tricky

working with pr people because they have some ideas of how they want someone to be portrayed and then your job on the editorial side is to sort of say, sort of dismantle that, and portray something that is a little bit more honest. i think what you see in these photographs are in more honest sco,ayal of her and her not necessarily a woman ceo but the ceo of a major company. lisa: this is somebody who is extremely focused on managing time. during the photo shoot, did you get the sense he was counting down the seconds? >> i think most ceos are sort of always counting on the seconds because it can be a comfortable when you are in front of a camera. overall, they were very, very gracious. it was one of the earliest cover shoots. he sent a fantastic photographer who has shot a lot of really

shotant photos for us and the twitter cover for us and other things, and so i think they were very gracious in giving us the time that he had. lisa: up next, microsoft ceo in the making of a company cloud first. nba commissioner adam silver on how social media is changing the game. all of that i had on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ lisa: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm in for carol massar and david gura. you can find us on the radio.

in this week's special interview issue, bloomberg reporter dena bass sat down with c.e.o. from microsoft to talk about how he is going to take his company so they can keep it moving for. i sat down with him to talk about it. he is very data-driven in general, so he rigorously tracked many things in his life, and one of the things he tracks is something that he does with every minute of his day, time spent in meetings, time spent at home, all sorts of different things personal and business life. one of the things he is trying to figure out is whether he is using his time in the most efficient way as ceo and so he talked to me about trying to balance how much time he spends outside of the company because of course a ceo needs to be doing things inside the company but also needs to be reaching out to the broader technology community and the augurs -- also how muchy tracks

time he spends in meetings and how productive the meetings are. not just how many, but only worthwhile, are there too many layers of people in each meeting? how many meetings gets bombed from one meeting? if you set up a meeting with the ceo, does i create 15 other meetings that people have to go to an end winds up being a waste of time? lisa: but he figures out the situation, i'm sure she can find a way to sell it. this brings me to the next question which is really culture. you asked the menu spoke to him about how he plans to change the culture at microsoft. can you explain? >> sure. he took over as ceo in 2014, the culture in general use was not as a good place. the company was a little beat out. he had missed some significant technological trends and failed to capitalize on them. mobile comes to mind. people felt that meetings were

something that they were going to with layers of bureaucracy and product development which is been moving too slowly. there was a lot of concern about the way the culture had become. he spent a lot of time trying to reset and one of the key lessons for him has been from a book called "mindset" and it focuses on the idea that somebody who is a learned all is always going to come out ahead from someone who is a know it all. the idea is you have to have a mindset, the willingness to question yourself, the willingness to learn and grow. trying to change that, he looked at it through a personal lens and said to me, he comes home every night it's us, what did i do today where i was to fixed, to stock in some way and not willing to learn and open up my mind? he sort of feels if he can fix of himself and then fix it only company level, the company's culture will be in a better place. lisa: nba commissioner adam silver set down with a bloomberg

reporter and talked about how basketball was planning to change the way it broadcasted itself considering the changes online. >> i thought i would take advantage of the opportunity to ovek about, i' lvo sportscaster ball and i thought that maybe they could have fewer timeouts and kept them earlier the game it would work better as an entertainment product, so i brought that to him and he said, "look, we are aware of the problem and we are working on. we are not sure how to fix it. they have done some things as he pointed out. actually made the time that a timeout takes standardized. you thought this would have been a long time ago, but they actually used to have coaches, tv partners that would kind of push them and then we get longer and longer especially during the

nationally televised games. now they have a caulk in the arena and everybody knows and it is standardized. they have been working on it. they know that it is something people complain about. lisa: kerry diplomatic answer to your question. that brings me to my next question. he is to be a negotiator when dealing with the union and a lot of people were talking about a freeze in playing disruption to the schedule this fall. did you get a sense of how far he is negotiating with unions? >> the way it is set up, there is an agreement that has both sides. it could be as early as january that they are in a lockout. if either side ops out and they cannot agree, he says they are already, he and the unions and their directors are already informally talking about this. he expressed a lot of confidence that there would not be any kind of lockout or anything like that. at this point, he would say that. i mean, there is a lot of money

that just came in, especially with the new tv deal with tnt, espn that have seen huge revenue there's an air force huge increases and contracts to players. everyone is getting rich but there is a lot of attention about player movement and the size of contracts. lisa: up next, are you better stuffing cash under your mattress rather than your savings account? we take a look at the rate. ♪

♪ lisa: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm lisa abramowicz, in for carol massar and david gura. for the first time in recorded history, zero and negative

interest rates are the status quo. i sat down with economic editor peter coy to talk about what the implications were. why would anyone in their right mind pay a government or bank money in order to have the privilege of lending to them? >> kit is strange. it is the first time in world history it has ever happened, so the fact that we are asking this question is entirely reasonable. the answer? well, there are a few. loan, say,ll make a let's say it is a bond in the loan in the form of a bond where people are, you are giving somebody $1000 and they are going to pay you back $990. you would do that because you might have even less money if you did not do it. for example, if you had deflation of 2%, and your bond

lost only 1%, well, then you are better off taking would have been. lisa: ok, deflation and the other scenario would be the stock market blowing up in a you are just going to get your money back and that is better than nothing. why would that stimulate growth? >> it would stimulate growth. i will just tell you the theory, not to say whether i agree with ,hat or not, if you can borrow the lower the rate you can borrow, the greater incentive you have to borrow. because projects that were not reasonable to do with 0% might become reasonable to do at -1%, for example. conversely, if you were saving money before and hoarding it somewhere, now you will think, maybe i should go for a riskier project that will not have been reasonable for but with the giving so little money under safe investment, it gives you

incentive to reach up for more risk just to make something on your money. words, forher companies and governments encouraging them to borrow cheaply to do things, and for the investors, it encourages them to lend to potentially more speculative borrowers in order to get some sort of income. what is the verdict? has been working? >> you never can be too sure. you cannot run the experiment twice. we do not have these in country trying negative rates are not trying negative rates. you can get some clues by looking at, well, how strong is the economy? and the u.s. which has positive rates is doing better than europe and japan which has negative rates, so that would be an argument that it is not working, but again, you do not know how that europe and japan would have been if they had not tried negative rates. lisa: up next, the europeans making sure america's tech giants are playing by the rules.

marissa mayer's next career move. ♪ ♪ everything is awesome

♪ everything is cool when you're watching a screen ♪ ♪ everything is awesome, ♪ when you're sharing a meme ♪ ♪ a voice remote, "show me angry kings" ♪ ♪ you know what's awesome? everything! ♪ ♪ apps that please, more selfies, ♪ ♪ endless hours of the best tvs ♪ ♪ brand new apps, shows to go, ♪ ♪ awesome internet that's super whoa... ♪ ♪ everything is awesome xfinity. the future of awesome. hohey s w'oiit ghong, estcak ?hoestcak .th lais p hceotas hkeca hyso wn' aret't ey llsekeg lica hotkes? cwithstomcain business tean fid wi, pro cthey bould e.ju ddst aus a czetomid ey age yltowiour rofi pas splgeh pa an u'd yo 'll year cusomerer wheie thesr ey a aredylrea

-ju ddst aus a czetomid ey age on dheiresevic pas splgeh pa .or upder 'its hare tstn jui, wif c itelan howp grr younebusiss. u y'don'e t se ethat dveryay odintrg ucin pwifiwiro, fi hthatelyorow usur bs.ines ascomct .ness t builbufor sssine lisa: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek. " iran coming from inside the new york take orders at the magazine. -- i am coming york headquarters at the magazine. to leaders of black lives matter and ringo starr and why he voted for grexit. all of that -- brexit. all of that coming up on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

i am here with assistant managing editor of bloomberg businessweek who really came up with this issue. there are so many must read interviews. one thing i have to mention is air asia ceo. i am fascinated. his dream was always to become the head of an airline. >> that was a funny anecdote in the interview where he says, he wanted to be in airline executive. he told that to his father and his father said, hey, if you do better than the doorman at the hilton, i am ok with that. lisa: what child once to be the head of an airline industry. ? >> this is a man that loves airlines. he loves airplanes. when he was a kid, he would go out to the airport and watch them take off. and although he has worked all over the world at .irgin, warner music

he has been around. but he decided to do, he saw what happened with southwest airlines and figured, why not do the same thing for asia, bring low-cost carriers in and is, was, there are only 6% of the people in malaysia that have actually flown. gettinge him a 94% of lots of business and it worked. they are the largest carrier in nation. lisa: he does not like getting dressed up? >> know, and he did not to dress up with a photo which is fine for us. lisa: taking on some pretty big companies, disney, amazon. can you talk about that? >> that is one of the reasons we were interested in her. she has sort of brought a lot of american companies over. it isof people say because they are american but what was interesting about the interview, she said it is not about being american or any

national, but it is the companies that are leaders in a particular space, even when they do very good business, you have to be careful they are not using their power to take other new interpleader's from picking up. whether those intervenors are european or not, and that is a very different way of looking at it because we had a question, why stop people at google? she said, what is to say the good service of today could hold us back? lisa: of course, we also hear from the google driverless cars czar. does he think we will see them? >> he does. this is a man that used to be for, the guy that ran hyundai in the u.s.. he has true car bread.

he believes will not think about the brands of cars but the transiting from point a to point b and that is how we will think about business and that is how you make a lot of money. because suddenly you can make transportation the issue as opposed to the mystical 1950's view of sitting house on wheels. lisa: why even have a car? correct? >> i would go for it. lisa: i went to. you speak to the yahoo! ceo marissa mayer was not had an easy time. >> she has had a tough time running a company and trying to turn around a company at the same time she was trying to sell it. finally, she was able to do both. lisa: that she see much he came out at the other end a stronger person or did she seem beaten-down? >> she seems to think it was a good experience for her and she is extremely hard worker and so it works for her.

abouti sat down to talk running yahoo! while trying to sell it back. you met with marissa mayer's, one of the most written about women in technology, very high profile. where did you meet her? >> i met her at the guy who headquarters of week after the announcement that yahoo! had sold itself to verizon which was capstone on this very controversial for year, tenure that she had as ceo. lisa: did she seem stressed out? >> she seemed more relaxed and sort of more comfortable than i think i had seen her in any interview that i had seen on tv or whatever. pleased withmewhat the outcome and also maybe just at peace. she basically ended up doing battle with all of these different constituencies, mainly activist investors but also sort of former yahoo! employees that have been monday morning

quarterbacking everything she has done all the while yahoo!'s business has performed poorly. it is that it kind of terrible or difficult for years --four years. it felt like it was a reasonable outcome. lisa: did you leave the w feeling differently about her? >> i feel like i have been so pathetic to yahoo! entertain year. we did a cover story about all of the things i gone wrong, but there are also a lot of things that have gone right and i think there are strong arguments to be made that it was enough as an uphill climb and she did as well she could have given all of the diversity of the company face. d. what i thought was interesting coming out of the interview was just talking to her about what is it then like to run yahoo! will also try to sell it while also having three kids, which she did while she was going

through this crazy thing. period in anyng ceo's life. i doubt this is the last we will see from her and i think this will be one of the most formative experiences in her career. lisa: talk about that. she said that she plans to stay with yahoo!. i know some people say that seems unrealistic. what do you think is next for her? the asianve to unwind assets. alibaba, which is basically the best thing that ever happened to yahoo! and in a lot of ways the worst thing because it basically ended up swapping the iconic internet company. i think she will at least stick around for i don't know, six months to a year overseeing some of the transitions to verizon, trying to get things figured out on the alibaba side. i think at some point, she will move on. she says she plans to stay at verizon indefinitely.

i do not know what definitely needs but i also asked her, where do you see yourself in five years? she said something interesting, she felt like she had built up a lot of skills as ceo and she would like to use those. to me, here that and i think, she wants to run the company. there have been rumors she was going to do some sort of investing thing and i think that is still a possibility. take her at her word, five years from now she will probably be the ceo of a company. lisa: you talk about that incredibly busy time of her life with three children and gently the sale of yahoo!'s assets. you have a sense of how she do that? this came up in the interview. she is a very hard worker. she said, asked her, what you learned google? theyaid, first of all, have amazing thinkers and she talk about that and then she said, the thing people forget is that they work super hard at

google. she said for the first five years she did and all night or every single week. i think basically the answer to how she did five jobs, meaning basically running yahoo!, dealing with the investors, having children, anyway, it goes on, it was just a work like crazy. marissa mayer is known for her fashion sense and she is no stranger to flourishes. i spoke to area brown -- area iel around. for -- brown. like a realeel picture of someone that has been in the news a lot, and much more natural way of presenting her and so we were happy with the result. lisa: let's take a look at the alicia garza pictures. she comes off looking very strong, focused and very in control. >> yes. two shoots of her.

decided that she was going to be one of the five cover personalities, we'll pressure again to do a shoot. this time, in the studio and we wanted something that was again humanizingalso still and approachable. i definitely think that portrait is so striking. garzaup next, what alicia aims to accomplish with black lives matter. ♪

♪ lisa: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." you get also find us on the

xm channel 19. dc and am washington 960 in the bay area. in this week's special interview issue of "bloomberg businessweek garza, a longtime activist and the cofounder of the black lives matter movement sits down in talks to us about what exactly inspired her to start this. here she is in her own words. people tune out. i know i do. i am going to come back and when they are a little calmer hopefully people are. leaning in and trying to hear what is going on and when they lean back out again, hopefully they have some stuff to think about. my name is alicia garza and i am one of the cofounders of black lives matter.

say "all lives matter" in response to black people saying "black lives matter" is actually saying black lives do not matter. what is important for you to know, it is only a front to you if you believe that black people should be inferior, if you believe that black people are living in the conditions that they are because of their own choices. we are not just a movement that is focused on police violence and police were telling. the reality is that for black people in this country, we have been plagued by a pervasive and dominant system when we look at issues of housing, employment, education, health care and health care access. black people are at the bottom of those disparities.

over the last three years, we have grown from a hashtag to an international organizing effort. a lot of people think organizing is in the streets with a bullhorn and turning up, and organizing is not that at all. none of organizing is glamour, but some of it is rewarding. we can build a world are all lies matter together if we can knowledge the way today in which all lives do not matter. lisa: i spoke with a reporter who landed the interview with alicia garza. >> the phrase "black lives matter" and the black lives matter network that alicia garcia is the creator of goes back to the night george zimmerman was exonerated after killing trayvon martin it again with a facebook rant or love letter to black people, as she put it, describing it as both a rant and a love letter that try to push back on some of the conversations see some people

talking about, that she saw too much responding to zimmerman or, if black people just behaved different way, then they would not be subject to this kind of violence, and so that letter turned into a twotag and she and her co-creators put it out and started people -- urge people to start organizing. they wanted to connected with not only to police violence at all for to a broader set of issues around systemic and structural racism in the united states. lisa: as she points out, racism is a sort of nuanced evil in our society. she said even great people can perpetuate the system that sort of insurers in into's -- institutionalized as racism. what are they asking for? >> they are pushing for changes and a range of policies and the

economy, criminal justice. one of the parts of our conversation was the discomfort and ambivalence that she and some other activists have been pushing for the criminal justice system to be part of the solution to racist violence. she called out hillary clinton for not fully supporting the $15 minimum wage as something that would make a difference in this fight and make all lies matter by making black lives matter. lisa:, redefining beautiful. we hear from a fashion designer that wants to wear out the size system. why ringo starr was all in for brexit. ♪

♪ lisa: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek."

designer is using fashion to make it bigger statement. i spoke with a bloomberg reporter about what it was like to talk with him. >> he was born in singapore but grew up in a call. in india before moving here to new york to become a fashion designer and pursue his dream. over the past few years, he has gotten really popular on red carpets with celebrities and he got into mainstream america with a fashion line in collaboration with target. a second, one think that was interesting to me about the interview was this feeling throughout the whole thing that he fundamentally felt like an outsider from his youth to even coming here. he definitely seemed not to be mainstream and yet here he is very much mainstream.

and you talk a little bit about that? >> he told me when he was growing up in nepal he felt like an outsider in school. he went to a british catholic school, and all boys school and always felt like he was never a part of the group, that he was an outsider, that he did not get along and that really affected his psyche. himself over time that, you know what? the popular opinion is not always the right one, and if he wants to pursue his dreams and do what he wants, that should be the way he goes. lisa: how does that influence the way that he works? >> it definitely influences his creative process. he did not want to be known as nothing designer because of his background but he wants to be true to it and actually be global. i think it problem and, not a problem in fashion, but a common occurrence in fashion is that a

designer gets pigeonholed into something that they are good at. example orstream something like that, let's say, ugg boots. you have a lot of trouble selling things that are not boots because they are so well known for that one thing. if high-fashion designers get known for one thing, it is hard to pull yourself loose. lisa: one thing he does is designed for lane bryant which is a plus size designer. he spoke about that with you, the idea of designing people for a little bit bigger. what did he have to say? >> it is such an underserved market, the plus size market and he has many thoughts on sizeism in fashion. lane bryant is trying to get more of these fashion collaborations with people. they did a christian soriano saidboration and now he there is definitely a problem

with sizeism in fashion with sizes of models, just not selling these people those goods. decadesthat comes from comingdown information from fashion magazines and the industry and designers saying this is what beauty is supposed to be. these days, the conversation is changing every moment and you are seeing a lot more acceptance of different body types and everything, and this is a conversation he absolutely wants to have. lisa: ringo starr is unapologetic and it comes to why he voted for britain to leave the european union. was one of the more approachable celebrities i have encountered. he goes to capitol records for his birthday in one of the first things he does is sit down for a series of interviews with reporters including myself,

lucky enough to be inaccurate, and the first thing he asked what he was about my shirt. i was wearing a polo shirt that i had gotten at coachella music bearsal and it has these in spacesuits and he thought they were raccoons and so he says, i want to talk about that. [laughter] lisa: another thing you talked about was britain's vote to exit the european union. it is a surprise because the beatles were progressive and all you need is love and ringo starr said he voted for brexit. >> yes. i was surprised by that. that is why i brought it up and interview which was otherwise about streaming music and the state of the music business. there are two things that struck me. one that ringo never can -- no longer considers u.k. as home. the other, he has this sense that clearly many voted for brexit share that the european union has in some way hurt the u.k. and that it would be better on its own.

the one thing that does make some sense is that he does have this belief in unity and helping one another out and considering everybody's interest and not being totally self-interested, and his take on how the eu has been functioning is that all of the different countries are just looking out for themselves and it has led to that policy. lisa: he seemed pretty negative generally on the music industry. was that your sense as well question mark >> yes, -- as well? >> yes. you are right. if you have been in the industry for 40 years, you tend to glorify the music industry on how it was before. he remembers the 1960's and 1970's, the sense of camaraderie with the other artists and i do not know if he feels that anymore. a bee is a byproduct of where he is in his life for the music industry is just something he does not like. lisa: "bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands and online now. we will be back next week. ♪

>> coming up on "bloomberg best," the stories that shape the week in business around the world. walmart makes a deal to add online strength. trump and clinton layout economic blueprints. >> upon taking office, i will issue a temporary moratorium on new agency regulations. >> we will work with both parties to pass the biggest investment in new, good paying jobs since world war ii. >> earnings season continues and we'll take a tour behind the numbers. >> the chinese consumer is very, very healthy. >> we are pretty well-positioned.