Francois-Henri Pinault Quotes

Innovation requires resources to invest, and you can see many companies pulling back and going into an intense protective mode in a major extended period of financial distress.

In a period of economic downturn, the overwhelming instinct is to pare back, cut costs, and lay off. If you do that, do so with your strategy in mind. The worst mistake is to cut across the board. Instead, reconnect and recommit to a clear strategy that will distinguish yourself from others.

During an economic slowdown, one needs to be cautious, but I think it's equally important to not get sucked into the vortex of defensive thinking.

Even when the business took a real nose-dive, you're thinking, 'OK, how are we gonna get out of this? What we gonna do? We can work harder.'

I've lived through periods of illiquidity before. Asset prices come down. The economy slows or even goes into recession. Then the cycle re-starts. We buy at lower prices with less leverage.

Our ultimate goal is to stay in business. We are not here with a specific plan. That's kind of how our entire career has evolved. We will figure things out as we go along.

When businesses go through hard times, through down markets, what do they do is they challenge every basic assumption of how they operate. They innovate. They create disruption for a while that leads them to even greater heights when the economy turns around.

We are taking a business-as-usual position at my agency, though business before 9/11 wasn't that hot either!

What we know about the global financial crisis is that we don't know very much.

What an entrepreneur does is to build for the long run. If the market is great, you get all of the resources you can. You build to it. But a good entrepreneur is always prepared to throttle back, put on the brakes, and if the world changes, adapt to the world.

Making new products is an easy tap for a company in a recession.

When the economy gets wobbly, people pay attention to the leadership failures.

During an economic crisis, what matters is that the government keeps its foot on the accelerator.

Some things never change - there will be another crisis, and its impact will be felt by the financial markets.

In business, if you realize you've made a bad decision, you change it.

From a productivity standpoint, you're supposed to reduce headcount on par with declining revenue. If you believe the environment isn't going to improve, you should take a bigger cut to get in front of the problems.

I think I've changed my business strategy every year since 2003. You have to be watching the horizon constantly. The rug has been pulled out from under our feet so many times.

You cannot have the financial system crippled because of lack of decision making and lack of quality people.

You change your business plan to anticipate and adapt to changes in the marketplace.

We have been dealt a very weak hand by the financial market meltdown, bailouts, and recession. We can't act like it's a strong one.

It's almost 10 years since the 2008 crisis, but we all still remember the consequences of ignoring threats to the public finances.

You can learn to prevent a storm, or you can learn to ride the storm. If you learn to ride the storm, the storm is not a problem anymore.

In difficult economic times, I'm firmly opposed to austerity.

Tough times call for tougher decisions.

I've just seen it all - I've seen the bird flu, I've seen the Asian economic meltdown, SARS, 9/11, economic cycles.