Denise Morrison

When I was growing up, my father helped kindle my passion for innovation and technology. He was a high-ranking executive at AT&T and used our family dinner table as a focus group. ”

We need to be in front of consumer trends and translate those trends into insights and foresights. ”

Moving with the times is an important idea for strategy today. ”

The top principle for disruptive and sustaining innovation is that it has to have a laser focus on customers. Innovation begins with their needs and expectations. ”

I can cite numerous sponsors at different places in my career that made a huge difference for me just in terms of pulling me aside and giving me a tip or some coaching, or just watching what I was doing and not being afraid to tell me the truth about it. ”

You need to be strategic about how you define your leadership journey and where that takes you. ”

The thing that I learned early on is you really need to set goals in your life, both short-term and long-term, just like you do in business. Having that long-term goal will enable you to have a plan on how to achieve it. ”

The first step in changing a culture, I believe, starts with the senior leadership team - and with the CEO. ”

The best companies will build culturally diverse leadership teams and workforces with divergent backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. ”

For me, if I knew that I wanted to be a CEO and I set that final destination right up front, that helped me develop a career track. ”