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Christie Hefner has tried to design a corporate culture that is open to all ideas.

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Christie Hefner:

Christie Hefner, daughter of Hugh Hefner, is the former chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises.

During her tenure, Hefner restructured operations and initiated the Company's highly successful electronic and international expansion. The Company launched its branded channel in 1982, making Playboy the first magazine brand to be successfully leveraged into television. In 1994 led the Company onto the Internet when Playboy became the first national magazine on the World Wide Web.

Hefner is active in a number of local and national organizations. She was the first woman elected to the Chicago chapter of the Young Presidents' Organization. Hefner helped found the Committee of 200, an international organization of preeminent women business owners and executives. She serves on the boards of Rush University Medical Center, Canyon Ranch Health Resort, and on the board of governors of the Paley Center for Media. Hefner is also on the Advisory Boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and The Creative Coalition, and a member of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. She also spent four years as project board chairman for the CORE Center, raising $30 million to build this innovative clinic and research facility, which opened in Chicago in the summer of 1998. The CORE Center conducts clinical research and provides prevention education and outpatient care for people with HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hefner: Yeah. I agree with the premise of the question because the rate of change is just so fast whether it’s through globalization or technology that, you know, if it wherever true that you could do sort of a five-year plan and then just put it aside and execute it, it’s certainly not true today and there is a constant need to innovate. One of the ways that we have benefited this, we do a lot of our business development in partnership structures whether that’s in the US or globally and that allows us to kind of go to school, if you will, on what other organizations are also doing. So, for example, take the mobile sector. You know, if you only look at the US market where frankly our, you know, cellphones and our networks are so far behind what it’s possible to do with, you know, mobile devices in Europe or in Asia that you wouldn’t even see the possibilities. But, because we’re a global company, we were able to see six years ago the potential for those devices being entertainment devices as well as, you know, e-mail and phone devices. And, again, striking deals with companies overseas to test different kinds of content, whether it was games or video. So, I think looking outside of your own organization and working with your partners, even vendors can be an interesting source of innovative ideas.