John Woolard, the chief executive of solar thermal energy company BrightSource, sat down at Reuters’ Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit in San Francisco to talk about energy efficiency, project financing and the future  of carbon-free power.

His advice: build fast!

(Editing/video by Courtney Hoffman)

Most top technology executives are used to juggling businesses worth hundred of millions of dollars, yen or euros. But this week at the Reuters Technology Summit, we asked: if we gave you $1 million to invest anywhere -- but not in your own company -- where would you spend it?

INTERNET / STARTUPS

If you want the quick answer, I would invest it in Twitter.  I'm sorry that we weren't in it. I don't know where it's going and it would be a fun ride.

-- Tim Draper, managing director of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

I would love to work more with some of these interesting startups like kiva.org that are developing interesting and innovative ways to create micro-lending programs for folks around the world.

I've a couple of friends and I would like to invest in their companies, little start-ups. One of them is called Trazzler and the other is called Fluther. One is an innovative travel startup and the other is a service that helps people get answers to questions they need.

I'm not a real big stock guy. Maybe a little Apple, a little Google -- companies I use every single day so why not invest in them?

-- Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone

It's stuff in our industry. The most vibrant industry is ours. We're complaining but the reality is we're making money. I would literally go after a couple of smaller companies that are up and coming. (Such as) Lala. It's iTunes without having to download the client. It's a really neat job. Check it out. You take music on the go. It's a really nice design.

-- Yahoo Inc  Chief Technology Officer Ari Balogh

I have done some angel investing and what I have found in angel investing is it hasn't been because I was excited about the sector, it was because I was excited about the person. So I don't know that I could pick a sector, but if I see the right people, that is where I would put the $1 million.

-- NetSuite Inc Chief Executive Zach Nelson

ENERGY

I would put it in the hands of scientists who are trying to discover the next energy alternative. By giving them more R&D dollars, we fuel opportunities for higher education. We hopefully allow them to buy better supercomputers and that could improve the computer industry's short-term prospects and it could obviously help discover the next generation of energy source that could change humanity altogether.

-- Nvidia Corp Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang

There are many attractive companies in the environmental energy sector. Especially in Japan, technologies are advanced and there are a lot of companies that established business strategies and models from early on. Also, health and safety will be more valued in the future, so healthcare is a very important area.

-- Konica Minolta Holdings Inc Senior Executive Officer Shoei Yamana

MIXED PORTFOLIOS

"Because I'm 60, I would probably put half in corporate bonds, spread them around, get a nice interest rate on them. And I would probably put some into energy because I am a long-term believer that energy costs are going to continue to climb, and I think they've gotten depressed. And then I would put it into consumer electronics stocks and consumer non-durables. I'm a believer that consumers will come back and will spend again. So I would invest in those things.

-- Corning Inc Chief Financial Officer Jim Flaws

The financial sector will come back. I think some smart investment in the financial sector makes sense. Tech will be one of the first industries to emerge from this because that spending is important to the growth and cost agendas of companies.
I'd probably put a third in natural resources probably oil and gas. The fact is it is a diminishing asset. That is probably going to create supply problems that will tend to drive up the value of those problems.

-- Dell President of Large Enterprise Steve Schuckenbrock

I'd invest in a company whose business is not doing well. Stocks of companies that are making a lot of money don't have much room to grow. There are many sectors that are not well performing but won't ever vanish. For example, chipmakers may be struggling, but that's only because of the supply/demand balance. When demand comes back, the business will pick up again.
Also, materials and infrastructure industries are interesting. There are countries like China that still need to improve infrastructure, so I think it would be interesting to invest in those.

-- Capcom Co Ltd CFO Kazuhiko Abe

HEALTHCARE

Personally, I still think health care. I think the pharmaceutical companies have been beaten down a lot...As population ages, everybody needs more medical help. Pharmaceuticals, drugs are a big part of it. Short term, I think the dollar is going to fluctuate. I wouldn't sell dollars for the long term. If I had a million dollars, I would probably move to a very beaten down currency at this point, maybe Australian dollars, and then back into U.S. dollars in a year or two.

-- Sybase Chief Executive John Chen

I think that the area that is worth investing is in the healthcare area. Small start-up companies that are looking to wirelessly enable health. This whole area of letting people monitor their own health and give them feedback and let others have access. I think there is just a huge revolution in healthcare coming with high-tech. When people can give you a pill, and track it and see inside of your body and tell you what's really wrong with you...I think that whole area is about to just mushroom. It defies economic cycles. People get sick or get ill regardless of economic cycles.

-- AT&T Mobility President Ralph de la Vega

MISCELLANEOUS

I like very much these electronic readers. We actually started that several years back, we were ahead of the time, and we found that publishers, textbook publishers, were not very receptive. The area of flexible paper and digital paper and publishing. We're not there yet. But (Amazon's) Kindle is stepping in the right direction. There is a lot of innovation in that space. But it's got to be like a $49.95 product, not a $300 or $400. It's got to be for the masses. It's got to bring educational qualities to kids in the Amazon, 1,000 miles away from civilization.

-- SanDisk Chief Executive Eli Harari

I'd say Apple. You wouldn't be able to find any other company in the world that can do everything from OS to hardware to services like Apple does. It is a company that has a potential to keep offering new services. Apple's ability to develop products is incomparably better than others.

-- Gree Inc CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka

Based on what I saw on CNBC, I think I would put it in Hormel. Since I saw the sales of the Hormel chili and Spam have increased recently because of the economy. It's as good an idea as any.

-- Advanced Micro Devices Inc CEO Dirk Meyer

I'd put it in the bank probably. Definitely not in the automotive industry.

-- Marvell Technology Group CEO Sehat Sutardja

You know, being pretty conservative in nature, it's either invested in TI or sitting in the most conservative way possible. I get more than enough excitement in my daily life than needing excitement with investments on the side on that front.

-- Texas Instruments CEO Rich Templeton

Williams did credit Apple with one thing — a knack for design:  ”They pioneered new ground by taking this beautiful display size and doing a display-only product. That was pioneering”.  Symbian software is used in about two-thirds of all smartphones but of course not in the hugely popular Apple iPhone.

                                                                                                                        Apple introduces iPhone

                                                                                                                        3.0 OS software 

                                                                                                                        development kit in 

                                                                                                                        March 2009 

In the adrenalin-fueled world of Internet start-ups, where "Biz" is usually followed by "Dev," where did Twitter co-founder Biz Stone get his nickname?

After talking to the Reuters Technology Summit of growth rates and future revenue possibilities, the Twitter co-founder chatted with the Reuters San Francisco bureau about his unusual moniker and why it can pose traveling hiccups.

Christopher Isaac Stone said his parents first began calling him Biz when he mispronounced Christopher, saying "Biz-ah-bah" instead.

The name stuck, and by the third grade everyone knew him as Biz.

"I don't even answer to Christopher anymore," said the software engineer, who also goes by Isaac.

Stone's full name appears on his passport, so accidental plane ticket bookings under the name Biz have led to some problems with air travel.

Getting through airports can be like a "social engineering" experiment, with success a matter of seeking out a friendly check-in person, he said.

Photo Credit: Reuters/Kimberly White (Twitter co-founder Biz Stone)

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told the Reuters Global Technology Summit on Monday that unless Twitter's growth rate slowed, by the end of the year its user base would exceed the population of Planet Earth.

Break out those calculators, nerds!

Let's put Biz's admittedly tongue-in-cheek statement to the test, using some back-of-the envelope math and the much-hyped, newly launched online knowledge compendium Wolfram Alpha.

Estimates of Twitter's user base vary widely. Let's take the frequently cited figure of 10 million, and double it to 20 million, since we're feeling generous and Oprah is involved.

Biz cited a week-by-week compound growth rate that would exceed the Earth's population by the end of the year.

We're in week 21 of 2009 -- that leaves 31 more weeks. We plugged the compound growth formula into Wolfram Alpha, and voila!

Twitter would have to grow its users by an astounding 20.5 percent a week to exceed Earth's population by the end of the year.

As Biz himself admits, this is impossible.

"Obviously there's going to have to be some changes in growth," he said before unleashing another metaphor:

"When there's a baby growing in the womb, if it grew as fast in the next months, it would be as tall as Mt. Everest. Sign-ups and that sort of thing will have to taper off, but that enables us to look at other areas of opportunity and growth."

Tech managers are not just savvy about new technology but also own the coolest, most cutting edge gadgets, right? Think again, some of them have no use for gadgets at all, finding pleasure instead in century old paintings and (gasp) pen and paper.

Alain Dutheil heads the world’s second largest mobile chipmaker, ST-Ericsson, but told Reuters Technology Summit he is not a big fan of the gadgets that run on his company’s chips.

“I am not a gadget man. I prefer paintings,” Dutheil said. He is particularly fond of late 19^th and early 20^th century masters from his home region Provence, which he collects.

Warren East, who runs leading chip designer ARM, admits he too has little use for gadgets. “I am a pen and paper kind of man. I can’t live without my fountain pen, it goes everywhere.” He does own a BlackBerry but says it’s just a “work tool” for him.

KPN’s Stan Miller, responsible for the Dutch company’s international mobile business, has only one thing to say when asked what his favourite device is or which gadget he cannot live without: “I don’t do gadgets.”

How do entertainment retailers come up with the prices they charge? Why is a movie theater ticket $10, a music CD $15, a rental DVD $3-$5 and a top video game $60?

We asked Strauss Zelnick, executive chairman of game publisher Take-Two. He says it's simple math, based upon the value of that experience.

Prices are determined by the marketplace -- if folks stopped buying stuff, prices would fall, etc. (Think gasoline). Balance that with cost. A game like Halo or Grand Theft Auto takes years to develop and costs as much to make as a Hollywood film.

Here's Zelnick in his own words:

The reason the consumer is willing to pay $60 for front-line product is because they are going to get 20-plus hours of game play out of that product.

I'm a big believer that there is an equation for the pricing of front-line entertainment products, which is: The hours of expected consumption times the value per hour, plus the catalog value.

The price per hour is pretty stable across media. For example, a motion picture: You have two hours of experience in the theater, a very high-quality experience, zero catalog value. So what's that worth? I guess about $5 an hour (on a per capita basis). If you apply that to a video rental, also zero catalog value, there's multiple people watching typically, it's a lower quality experience, that's how you get a video rental of three bucks. Recorded music, you will listen to the album (up to 10 times -- or hours -- on average). The same equation applies.

There's more:

What's driving that front-line price point is the perceived quality of the experience, times the number of hours you are going to have that, so that the price per quality hour of the experience, times the hours, plus catalog value. And I understand why that number would be, for the sake of argument, $60, versus for sake of argument, $15 for an album, versus $3 for a video rental, versus 10 to see a front line movie.
They are not so far off.

So it's not that we came up with that price point out of the blue. If we came up with it out of the blue, we wouldn't be selling anything at that price point.

For the record, the industry walks the walk. Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto has sold more than 10 million units in less than a year. And other huge industry sellers such as Metal Gear Solid, Fable, Halo, Madden NFL, Rock Band and Guitar Hero? Most have sold more than a million copies -- at $60 a pop, or more.

I admit that I've bought $5 DVDs, cheered, and watched them only once. I've also paid $60 for games, grumbled about it, and played them for months. Now I'm thinking about buying Rock Band 2 ($189) or Guitar Hero: World Tour (also $189) for the holidays. (grumble grumble grumble)

So what do you think? Are video games fairly priced?

(Photos: Screenshot from Amazon.com; Zelnick, Reuters)

Advertising at the highest end of the luxury market may be the last to get hit in an economic slump, but it's still going to get scathed before the ad market turns around, Nick Brien, who heads up Interpublic Group's Mediabrands, a holding company for media buying and planning agencies,  told the Reuters Media Summit in New York.

"There will always be some brands and marketers who are going to want to live beyond the realities that are going on for the masses of people," said Brien, who's responsible for agencies like Universal McCann, Initiative, Magna, and J3 . "That will go on... (but) will it be as pronounced as it was, will be it as mainstream?"

Brien didn't think so. Not when even Russian billionaires -- with their boats and Rolexes -- are feeling the pinch, he said. "Even if their wealth is coming down from a billion to half a billion, that's what it is -- it's coming down," Brien said.

As a result, "the messaging is going to change very considerably." Brien said Mediabrands clients globally have expressed concern recently that consumers are facing too much choice, especially at a time when "they have less funds, they have less confidence and they're going to be much more considered and careful about the choices they make." As CEO of Mediabrands, Brien oversees agencies that control billions of dollars in ad spend globally, though notes that most of his clients aren't in the super high-end luxury goods business.

So for high-end luxury goods advertisers, it's now going to be less about what media channel to use to spread their message of decadent living, and more about reworking marketing strategies to ensure big spenders still distribute their (slightly) shrinking wealth among pricey trinkets in these times of stress.

(Photo: Reuters)

Global strategy aside, Dow Jones Editor-in-Chief Robert Thomson sees a growth opportunity right here on his home turf. With regional U.S. papers laying off staff and scaling back business coverage, Thomson sees a "real opportunity for another paper to come in."

And yes, that would be The Wall Street Journal. "What we're noticing in markets like Chicago, LA and Miami... big city markets with papers that are changing, there are real opportunities to bring new readers to print as well as online," Thomson said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York.

We asked him how exactly the WSJ hopes to wean readers -- the intelligent, educated consumer of business news that Thomson said there's an abundance of right now in the United States -- away from other dailies, but the former Times of London editor offered no more details. "We're planning," is all he would say.

"Those papers have been particularly hard hit by declines in classified advertising," Thomson said. Also, many of these city dailies were slow to adapt to the changes in the information environment and are suffering from serious revenue and circulation declines for a host of reasons, he said. "There's an opportunity there."

So would Dow Jones, which Rupert Murdoch bought last year, be interested in buying a regional rival? "That's a very enticing proposition but not one we're thinking about... We're not planning to buy any papers, but if you ask me, newspapers have been ridiculously oversold."

He said community newspapers that have a strong web presence and a complementary print presence will do well, although no one's a close-enough competitor to the Journal. Not even the New York Times.

"We're twice as big as the New York Times," Thomson said.  "We're getting larger and they're getting smaller.  If there's a competition, only one person is winning."

People who talk and text on cell phones are still the number one source of movie theater complaints tracked by Regal Entertainment Group, Chairman and Chief Executive Mike Campbell told the Reuters Media Summit on Wednesday.

Campbell made news at a the 2006 Reuters summit by disclosing that Regal, the largest U.S. theater chain, had armed patrons in a few test theaters with gizmos that summon ushers to deal with problems ranging from rowdy audiences to a freezing auditoriums. Back then, Campbell reported that some patrons were "getting into physical battles in the theaters" over cell phones and that the chain had "had people assaulted with bats, knives and guns" over their electronic umbilical cords.

The program worked so well that Regal has now expanded it to 100 of its highest volume locations, and cell phone talkers and texters seem to be getting the message, Campbell said.

"We have noticed -- at least our perception over the last couple of years is -- we don't seem to be having quite as many issues there," Campbell said. "I think the message that we are trying to get out to customers, both subtle and not so subtle, is beginning to have some impact."

Regal has used data from the expanded program to track whether a particular disturbance "is mostly a... one-off situation or is there a pattern across the country," Campbell said.

Still, the most common problems are "cell phone related -- texting...and cell phone usage," Campbell said. "In general, the number one complaint... continues to be some kind of customer disruption."

(Photo: Director/actor Woody Allen uses his phone, but not in the movie theater. Reuters)