Wisdom from PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi

SMITH BRAIN TRUST -- PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi delivered the CEO@Smith keynote address today. Here are five quotable quotes from her presentation, which focused on the need for innovation and entrepreneurship:

“Put your hand up for the most difficult assignments.” Many people volunteer for the easy assignments, where success is assured. “My best learnings came from failures,” Nooyi said. Entrepreneurs need to be fearless. They need to celebrate failure as part of the discovery process.

“Greatness is not an individual pursuit.” Nooyi said organizations benefit when they bring people together from different backgrounds and consider problems from multiple perspectives. “Don’t close yourself off,” she said. “Embrace diverse opinions.”

“What’s good for society is good for business.” Nooyi said PepsiCo has made a commitment to improve the communities and environments where the company operates. One example comes from India, where water conservation programs have allowed the company to be “water positive” since 2009. “Our team has managed to conserve more water than we use in order to make our products.”

“Entrepreneurs aren’t just the young upstarts. They are anyone who is trying to create something out of nothing.” Some people wonder why the CEO of a Fortune 50 company would talk about entrepreneurship, but Nooyi said organizations of all sizes need problem solvers and value creators.

“Our employee base should match our consumer base.” Nooyi said she has a vision for Pepsico that starts with building a diverse and inclusive work environment. “We had to get a critical mass of diversity into the company in terms of the numbers,” she said. If 50 percent of the population is women, she said, then 50 percent of PepsiCo employees should be women in all levels of the organization.

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