Business

You cannot just say to people, 'oh be creative' and then there will be a waste of time. You have to be very clear in what you are looking for and listen to people.

President and CEO of Cirque du Soleil

At Cirque, we never talk about diversity because we live diversity. We have people in our organisation coming from 80 different countries. I like to describe us as citizens of the world.

President and CEO of Cirque du Soleil

There is no business without creativity. Creativity for me is the first condition to establish yourself as a leader in whatever you do in life.

President and CEO of Cirque du Soleil

Sometimes it doesn't matter if the other side doesn't care about fairness; provided you do, you explain what's going on. Now it's arbitrary versus arbitrary versus principle versus arbitrary.

Co-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor

What I like the most and essentially is never done is to start off a negotiation by talking about how you'll negotiate, what's the process going to be? And to say things like 'my goal in this negotiation is to reach an agreement with you in which we create a giant pie and split it evenly.'

Co-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor

I think the people who are larger or those who have more resources like to think they're the ones who have greater power… and they have benefited from that illusion.

Co-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor

People don't know what it is that they're negotiating over… If you don't, then it's hard to know if you've gotten a bad deal, a fair deal, or a great deal! That's going to lead us to the negotiation pie, and with the negotiation pie comes the extra value that negotiators create by coming together.

Co-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor

A lot of negotiation is teaching people tricks or verbal games, as opposed to providing a framework for thinking about negotiation. People want to come up with a solution that's fair. But what they think of as fair is often proportional division, and that just arises because they don't really understand what they're negotiating over.

Co-Author of "Co-opetition" & Yale School of Management Professor

As Carl von Clausewitz said, 'no plan survives first contact with the enemy.' It's not about having a plan, it's about planning. When you are in a fluid situation, things change, and you have to adapt quickly. You cannot freeze into inaction.

You become an entrepreneur, not by intent, but by accident. Those for me are the true entrepreneurs- people that just start building, perhaps even without a plan, they just do it. Look at the most famous ones…. Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, they never went to shows or to training, they just got on with it.

It doesn't matter how successful you are, how much market share you have, if you're in your comfort zone you will leave yourself exposed. Courage also links to decisiveness, which is one of the key attributes of great leaders. Cowardice pushes the day of reckoning out, decisiveness brings it closer.

In crises, people need to hear one or two simple messages to act on – not a confusing list. Through your communication, you also need to project certainty – and the fact that you have a plan (even if it's not fully formulated). Your team need to believe that they, and you, are going to get the job done.

It's like a tripod. Without one of the three, the whole marketing strategy collapses.

75% of people won't purchase from a brand they don't inherently trust.

You can't just market your way out of a bad product.

Marketing is not going to solve a bad product, but it will be an easier and smoother with a good product, with repeat purchases and word of mouth as being the two things that are critical.