Robert Pozen Quotes

You can learn everything that there is to know about the industry or the player from the company that is performing better or worse.

I don't know what would have happened to Wal-Mart if we had laid low and never stirred up the competition. My guess is that we would have remained a strictly regional operator.

You need a different checklist and different mental models for different companies.

If you are worried about the risk to your reputation, you don't launch a telecoms firm in an aggressive way.

I had the opportunity to go with some other teams. But I didn't consider those teams to be contenders, and I was right.

Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.

Most books on management are written by management consultants, and they study successful companies after they've succeeded, so they only hear winning stories.

It's been years, decades, since a president has lost a major trade initiative. That would be bad headlines.

People must be realistic when evaluating their business.

With these kinds of proposals, the devil is in the details. We're going to examine this realignment closely. We will fight any measure that compromises our needs - now or in the future.

We are not going to compete for programs where we do not believe we can get a fair and sufficient return.

To try to correct imbalances with trade restrictions is a grave error.

There's one thing I've learned about entrepreneurs' business plans. Every one is wrong.

Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.

How can you have free trade when you don't even have a free government?

Every good businessman or woman carefully analyzes all the available facts before making a decision.

We don't go into a market without a chance of a 40 percent share and sustainable differentiation. We wouldn't get into wiring oil rigs if we didn't believe we could get 40 percent.

Enforcing trade deals is spot on. Acting in the interest of American workers is correct. But large-scale tariffs are a terrible idea.

It is the performance of the business that matters. It is hard enough to figure out the future of the business. Do not try to figure out the future of the country or the world; focus on the business.

Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all used temporarily targeted tariffs on specific industries.

If you're well-prepared, you know what you're doing, and you have an idea what the opponents can do - what their strengths and weaknesses are - once you get into the game, those adjustments will be - I won't say easy, but relatively easier and more manageable.

The way deals are done, every idea is looked at 50 different ways. Now, the market continues to change all the time. And we are always looking at everything in evaluating how it fits with our strategy.

When we launched the Wii - I mean, again, people look back and say, '100 million units, it was easy!' Believe me, I was there, and it wasn't easy at all. We had tough conversations, internal debate, like, 'How are we going to do this? How are we going to bring it to life? What are we going to do?'

You can never make the mistake of underestimating an opponent, especially in the Champions League.

Any business can do business with Iran; they can also do business with the United States, but they can't do business with both.