Women play a couple of roles. They are in professional schools and increasingly producing the talent to keep the engines of the economy growing, but they're also the nurturers and the caregivers.

If I hadn't had mentors, I wouldn't be here today. I'm a product of great mentoring, great coaching... Coaches or mentors are very important. They could be anyone-your husband, other family members, or your boss.

When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response.

There is nothing like a concrete life plan to weigh you down. Because if you always have one eye on some future goal, you stop paying attention the the job at hand, miss opportunities that might arise, and stay fixedly on one path, even when a better, newer course might have opened up.

Market growth alone doesn't give you enough tailwind. You have to create your own. The way to do that is by designing products for consumers that wow them.

The one thing I have learned as a CEO is that leadership at various levels is vastly different. When I was leading a function or a business, there were certain demands and requirements to be a leader. As you move up the organization, the requirements for leading that organization don't grow vertically; they grow exponentially.

As a leader, I am tough on myself and I raise the standard for everybody; however, I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future.

Most companies target women as end users, but few are effectively utilizing female employees when it comes to innovating for female consumers. When women are empowered in the design and innovation process, the likelihood of success in the marketplace improves by 144%!

Just because you are CEO, don't think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I've never forgotten that.

Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different.

In today's world of blogging and tweeting, conversation has become a bit more staccato. In many ways we're more efficient, but I think the amount of longer conversations that radiated more warmth may have gone down.

There will never be a replacement for that ongoing physical contact. But I don't think blogging is meant to replace the face-to-face of friendships and meetings. Blogging is a way to keep in touch with a larger group of people on an ongoing basis, in a more efficient way.

When I grew up there was no web, blogging or tweeting. In fact, where I grew up there was not even television! I met a lot of my friends in school and in college, and they are still my friends today.

When I was president of the company, I said, 'Okay, I can do this - piece of cake.' Then when you are the CEO, the responsibilities multiply enormously because you worry about everything.

I think innovation as a discipline needs to go back and get rethought and revived. There are so many models to talk about innovation, there are so many typologies of innovation, and you have to find a good innovation metric that truly captures the innovation performance of a company.

Blogging and the Internet allow us to engage in a lot more real time conversations as opposed to a one-way dump of information or a message.

My guilty pleasures are the websites where you can look at the fashions and see how different outfits will look. You can even take a picture of yourself and download it and play with the fashions! I love playing with these websites to see what I can learn.

I asked my parents for permission to study in America and they were so sure that I wouldn't get in and get a scholarship that they encouraged me to try. So I applied to Yale and got an excellent scholarship. I then worked for the Boston Consulting Group for six and half years.

Lots are written about how 'she shows up at board meetings in the saree.' My God, I have never worn a saree to board meetings; people play it out in different ways. I think I have never shied away from the fact that I am an Indian, and I don't intend to, but you can be at home with both cultures.