Michael Bloomberg: Chairman Of The Big Apple

"Applying lessons from an early career on Wall Street and from two decades building his eponymous financial-information and media empire, the mayor is using technology, marketing, data analysis, and results-driven incentives to manage what is often seen as an unmanageable city of 8 million."

"Bloomberg sees New York City as a corporation, its citizens as customers, its sanitation workers, police officers, clerks, and deputy commissioners as talent. He is the chief executive. Call him a technocrat all you want; he's O.K. with that."

When he was sworn in as mayor in 2002, the city faced a budget gap of nearly $6 billion.

"Bloomberg had three options: cut services, raise taxes, or both. He did what no mayor had dared to do in more than a decade: He jacked up property taxes. And he didn't agonize over the decision a bit. 'It [was] easy to make that choice,' he recalls."

"Where most politicians would have seen only a fiscal solution to the budget gap, he spotted a marketing opportunity. He was protecting the New York City 'brand.' Bloomberg saw a low crime rate, good public transportation, and clean streets as indispensable to selling New York. Cutting back on services, he felt, would send the wrong message to the business community and the outside world."

Many of these NYC lessons, tactics and strategies can be applied to problems and challenges in American cities.