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About Joly: In September, Best Buy appointed Joly CEO, the first time an outsider was hired to lead the company. Since then, he has worked to stabilize the struggling consumer electronics retailer and make nice with founder Richard Schulze, who is trying to take the company private. Under Joly's leadership, Best Buy matched competitors' prices during the holiday shopping season and replaced much of its senior leadership team. Wall Street has applauded several of Joly's hires, including former Williams-Sonoma executive Sharon McCollam as CFO and Best Buy Mobile veteran Shawn Score as retail chief.

Personal file: For the past four years, Joly was CEO of Carlson, the global hospitality and travel company based in the Twin Cities. He has been credited for turning around some of the company's major brands, including TGI Friday's, Radisson hotels and Country Inns and Suites. Prior to Carlson, Joly led the restructuring of Vivendi's video game business (now part of Activision Blizzard) from 1999 to 2001. He later oversaw the integration of Universal and Vivendi's media assets in the United States. In the late 1990s, Joly helped lead a turnaround of EDS, a global technology services company now part of Hewlett-Packard.

What's big in 2013: Joly's "Renew Blue" turnaround strategy focuses on what he calls low-hanging fruit -- reducing product returns, devoting more store space to faster growing products -- that can help boost income.

Final word: "Direction needs to come from the top. I am an implement kind of guy. At some point, you need to make decisions. You don't change the strategy every minute."

THOMAS LEE