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Jean-Pascal Tricoire —
Businessman
Jean-Pascal Tricoire is the CEO and chairman of the multinational electricity company Schneider Electric... (wikipedia)
When you go for business, you just see the airport, the offices, cities. You never see what 80 per cent of the population does in a country, so if you want to understand what Indonesia is made of, or the depths of China or India, you have to go and see.
I don't believe very much in corporate offices. I believe in leaders who are with their customers and their people.
I loved operations, and I loved operations far from the headquarters. I had no passion for corporate.
I come from the deep countryside. My family was in farming. I was not really exposed to business. Coming from that environment, I just wanted in my life to go overseas - that was a childhood dream because I wanted diversity, contacts, cultural meetings with others.
When I see people with an interesting gap year, if they can explain it, if they can justify it, if they can show what they've learnt from it, it's sometimes more profitable or more intelligent than having been through a traditional, continuous race from high school to the end of university.