Happy New Year family! Let me take a moment to congratulate the newspaper staff for doing a fantastic job upgrading and modernising The Royal Gazette's website. It was a bit of a dinosaur before but the result is a new and improved and far more user-friendly website. It looks, feels and works so much better than its predecessor. Well done colleagues!This is the perfect segue into this week's topic generating new ideas, creativity, new business and new jobs as the way out of our recession and the economic downturn. More on this after the Top 20.Top of the hits to start off the year is Rihanna with her hit Only Girl In The World. I simply love this up-tempo dance track. Dance music rules. Interestingly, Bermudians tend to prefer soca, reggae and hip hop, but if you try to find or visit clubs that are known as the hottest clubs on the planet they are invariably dance clubs. Don't test me on this. I was a professional DJ for 12 years and I've been to those clubs. Nothing has changed. Even Diddy figured this out and went to Ibiza, a dance music Mecca, a few years ago. But I digress. Most of Rihanna's songs are dance tracks and they're killing off the competition, topping charts worldwide.Improving to #2 is Bottoms Up by Trey Songz featuring Nicki Minaj. You gotta like Nicki. She is well entrenched in the hip hop game. Tumbling to #3 is Just A Dream by Nelly.Up to #4 is Can't Be Friends by Trey Songz. Falling to #5 is DJ Got Us Falling In Love by Usher featuring Pitbull; a monster dance track that mixes well with the aforementioned Rihanna dance hit.Improving to #6 is Holding You Down by Jazmine Sullivan. Slipping to #7 is Just The Way You Are by Bruno Mars. Sliding to #8 is Teenage Dream by Katy Perry.Soaring to #9 is Dirty Picture by Taio Cruz featuring Ke$ha. Ke$ha's other single, We R Who We R advances up the charts to #10. Climbing to #11 is Champaign Life by Neo.Now this week's killer track and DJLT's favourite song at the moment: Up to #12 is Like a G6 by Far*East Movement featuring Cataracs & Dev. I recently heard this track on the radio and it had me bopping my head hours after it had stopped playing. Improving to #13 is Raise Your Glass by Pink. Down to #14 is I Like It by Enrique Iglesias featuring Pitbull.Improving to #15 it's What's My Name by Rihanna featuring Drake, a former essential new tune and one of the hottest tracks in the world. It is constantly on the radio in Bermuda and overseas. Slipping to #16 it's Hello, Good Morning by Diddy. Sliding to #17 is To Paris with Love by Donna Summer.Now the new tracks. In at #18 is Louder (Put Your Hands Up) by Chris Willis. This huge dance track can be found on the Clubland Volume 18 CD and it simply kicks. In at #19 is Grenade, by that smoking hot new artist Bruno Mars. Joining the list of hits at #20 is Firework by the irrepressible Katy Perry. Continued excellence from an already established and popular artist.Now back to this week's word: how to pull ourselves out of the recession. Well, contrary to some people's thinking, the Government, under the stewardship of our new Premier Paula Cox is off to a good start. Her desire and pronouncement to cut $150 million from the Civil Service budget is, whilst exceedingly ambitious, sending the right signal. But here are some thoughts on how we can pull ourselves out of the current economic downturn.I've read a whole lot of articles, periodicals, statements, etc, from a whole lot of people. Whilst all of it is good, the missing piece, I have found, is the need to develop new businesses.Even in a healthy and prosperous economy, seasoned economists know that entrepreneurship, new business start-ups, new venture creation and small business is where the greatest growth and new jobs are to be found. Since we have massive unemployment, if we want new jobs let's encourage new businesses.This is also the place from which the fastest developing countries, governments, economies and industries get their brain trusts. No offence against people my age and older, but we need the younger generation to step forward and sort out our mess. They have the creativity, the openness to change, the willingness to try something insane and ridiculous that just might succeed. Case in point, do you think that the internet was created by a person over 50? Naaaaah! No way! That's never gonna happen.We need young people to use all of their creative energy and genius to identify new business opportunities, new revenue streams for businesses and government, new products and services to sell, new ways of doing things, new solutions to old problems, just anything new, new and new. Out with the old and in with the new.The old ways of doing things have put us in this predicament. We must therefore find ways to do whatever we do better, faster and cheaper than we have ever done it before, because that's what the competition is doing. Survival in this modern and stressed economy demands it. Fail to do this and we will not come out of the downturn.Employees must reinvent themselves retrain, and rethink their work ethic, their commitment to their jobs, their ways of thinking and working. Employees should be looking at ways to make processes faster, less expensive, and thus make themselves real assets to their employers.Bermuda must find new sources of revenue for both business and government. We have a history of being seafarers but we have moved away from this. It could be that the sea offers a revenue stream. Could some young person far more creative than me look into this? Bermudians were pirates. We exported onions (and potatoes too I think), hence our nickname of Onions. We exported Easter Lilies; there are opportunities, we just need to find them and pursue them.We can't rely only on international business and tourism, they may already have reached the decline stage of their respective product life cycles. We have to find new revenue streams.But we cannot do it if we are constantly distracted by news of gunfire, the fear of going out in public, if we lose the freedom to move about the Country as we like, if we don't come together to make Bermuda the safe and peaceful place it used to be, can be and should again be. If we could get some of our young thugs to use that energy more creatively, to develop legitimate and legal business opportunities, we would really be onto something. We can do it Bermuda. Yes we can. Let's adopt the NIKE slogan and “Just do it!”….....……DJLT.