Justine Foo

Strategist and manager, Neurostrategies group
BrightHouse
Atlanta, Georgia

Foo has a PhD in complex systems and brain sciences from Florida Atlantic University. BrightHouse is a consultancy that works with companies such as Coca-Cola.

"The brain is arguably the most complex system we have ever encountered in the universe. I spent six years studying its dynamics, and it fundamentally changed the way I look at the world. I decided not to pursue academia afterward because I wanted to branch out and experience something new.

Transitioning into business from a background in academia was difficult. There's a certain amount of just acquiring the words in order to communicate effectively. The other issue is the pace. Science progresses quite slowly, and you don't talk or publish anything until you've checked, rechecked, and double-checked everything. Business is the 80/20 rule: You can't wait until you're 110% sure, or you'll miss the opportunity.

I joined BrightHouse [a hybrid creativity/strategy consultancy] in 2001. Einstein said you could never solve a problem in the framework in which it was created. So we try to deliver creative and innovative thinking by getting a roomful of people from diverse backgrounds--MBAs, artists, writers, health experts--who look at a problem from different angles. I am the only neuroscientist on board.

Now more than ever, companies have to understand human behavior in their effort to inspire customer loyalty. I can explain how brain and behavior are linked, how we take in and process information around us, and how that information motivates our choices. Companies are very hungry for that kind of clarity and insight. They can't get that with the research techniques currently available to them."

Thom Mount

Partner and president
Mount Films
Los Angeles, California

Mount received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. He has produced such films as Bull Durham and Natural Born Killers and is collaborating on an upcoming production with acclaimed writer Horton Foote.

"I was a painter in undergraduate school and lived in a loft in SoHo. I went to graduate school because I needed a master's degree to be able to teach. I got tangled up with filmmaking, which I enjoyed enormously, and thought it was, for me, a little better than being isolated in a loft all day painting.

Filmmaking has an artistic component and a business component. The two are inseparable. Film school was incredibly educational, not because it taught me how to use an editing machine or point a camera in the right direction, but because it showed me the dynamic interaction between the film you make and the society that embraces that film as users of the product.

When I started at Universal Pictures, I was put on the finance committee. I had no more business doing that than trying to fly to Mars, but I quickly came to understand that by being on the committee, I had to learn everything. Now we are constantly sifting through the changing world of film financing and redesigning strategies on a picture-by-picture basis. We do things like take advantage of governments' soft-money programs in places like South Africa and Australia and England. They give financial incentives or tax or labor rebates if the pictures have some sort of national origin. It's a horrible cliché, but we don't have any choice. When you're an independent producer in a world full of corporate behemoths, if you're not creative in your thinking, you're not alive."