Postcards

How the power players do it - by Fortune senior editor at large Patricia Sellers

Power Point: Pepsi's innovation challenge

October 8, 2009: 5:16 PM ET

"The age of thrift is here. You have to do innovation at both ends--premium innovation and innovation for the value consumer."

-- PepsiCo (PEP) chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi in a recent Q&A with Pattie Sellers. No. 1 on Fortune's 2009 Most Powerful Women in Business list (for the fourth year in a row) Nooyi today delivered another quarter of solid earnings. PepsiCo beat analyst expectations with net income of  $1.72 billion, up 9% over last year.

Nooyi is relentless in reinventing a company that many others might have thought didn't need reinventing. Investing in healthier products, reorganizing her core team, spending billions to acquire Pepsi's two largest bottlers...the list of changes go on and on. "Any capital we invested in the company has to be rethought," Nooyi said in the interview, noting, "The bottom line is: Through this downturn, you have to increase your investment, not cut back." She added, "Now is a wonderful time to look for disruptive models."

Click here for a series of video clips from Pattie's interview with Nooyi. --Jessica Shambora

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About This Author
Pattie Sellers
Patricia Sellers
Senior Editor at Large, Fortune
Executive Director of MPW/Live Content, Time Inc.

Fortune senior editor at large Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Marissa Mayer: Ready to Rumble at Yahoo," "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), and "Remodeling Martha" (Martha Stewart). She has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women in Business" package every year since its launch in 1998. Pattie is Executive Director of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business and beyond. She oversees MPW programs that enable women leaders to extend their influence and empower the next generation—such as Fortune MPW Entrepreneurs and the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Beyond her Fortune duties, she is also developing Live Content across Time Inc. Pattie grew up in Allentown, PA, graduated from the University of Virginia, and started at Fortune in 1984. Her blog, Postcards, is about how power players lead, manage others, and navigate their careers.

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