As IBM’s chief innovation officer Bernie Meyerson describes innovation, it is made of two kinds of activity; original ideas that are realized as discontinuous inventions and then subsequently made more useful through continuous improvement. The spinning disk drive (first commercialized in the 1950’s) started out as something completely new and game changing. These early drives started out holding less than four megabytes (about one song download) and were larger than refrigerators. Today’s drives hold terabytes and fit in your jacket pocket. Without continuous innovation many breakthroughs would find limited utility in the real world (according to Meyerson, the storage in your smartphone would take up the space of two cruise ships using those original drives).

Every new hire wants to make a good impression in the first 100 days. But for the new head of public relations, the stakes may be higher than just about any other executive position, except for the CEO. As the new “face” of the company, you need to work quickly to earn your spot as a trusted advisor and top communicator.