What Winning Companies Do in Times of Crisis
Winning companies don't just cut costs in a crisis. They balance survival with strategic investment. Four principles for investing through a downturn.
By Diego Alcalá · Sat Jul 25 2026 · Investing
In this piece we'll look at how companies can seize the opportunities of a crisis through the right investments in their business. “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” That phrase makes it clear that crises are not only a threat—they also offer special opportunities. Crises can expose weaknesses that weren't visible in good times. They create a sense of urgency to tackle change. And shifts in markets and customer needs open new avenues for growth. Unique opportunities arise to make targeted investments in the future.
Companies usually respond to crises with short-term measures: cutting costs; reducing spending on marketing, innovation, and training; trimming inventory; delaying growth investments; postponing or canceling new projects; reducing headcount; and freezing new hires. These measures are widespread, but the question we should ask is whether focusing on them is the only right path in a crisis. The negative consequences of the cost cuts made during the pandemic were still being felt years later.
What can we learn from past crises?
Crises in the current economic system are the norm, not the exception. They happen constantly around the world. The current accumulation of crises may feel special, but there is nothing unique, rare, or unforeseeable about a crisis. That's why analyzing past crises is a good starting point for identifying the best strategies for succeeding during and after one—even one as prolonged as the environments we periodically live through.
A study of 4,700 public companies across the three previous global recessions found that 17% of companies did not survive the recession. Of the remaining companies, about 40% had not returned to their pre-crisis sales and profit levels even three years after the recession ended. Only 9% of companies posted better financial indicators after the crisis than before and significantly outperformed their competitors.
What sets the winning companies apart?
Here's a hint: it's not the companies that cut costs most sharply and quickly. In fact, those were the least successful after the crisis. At the same time, the companies that invested boldly are among the post-crisis winners. The companies most likely to remain in the market were those that struck a balance between cutting costs to survive the crisis and investing for future growth. While they specifically reduced costs, they also mobilized resources to develop and launch future growth opportunities. The key was never stopping at the organizational level.
A study of companies during the 2007–2009 financial crisis underscores the importance of investing in the future during a recession. It focused on mid-sized companies in the sectors usually hit hardest by a downturn, and distinguished among three categories of investment:
- Infrastructure investments (for example, buildings and machinery).
- Economic competencies (for example, innovation and training).
- Personnel and their development.
The results are clear. After the recession, the most successful companies across all three categories were those that had increased—rather than reduced—their investments during the downturn. The need to take a long-term view during a crisis is also evident in research by the Boston Consulting Group. Compared with companies focused on short-term measures to secure solvency and survival, long-term-oriented companies showed significantly higher growth rates and returns than their competitors. A key factor here is investment in research, development, and innovation.
It isn't easy for companies to apply short-term cost-cutting measures while investing for the future at the same time. But crises are not only a threat—they also offer opportunities. Based on the lessons of past crises, the following four investment principles show how companies can benefit from a critical environment and even fuel their growth.
Four principles for investing in a crisis
1. Develop scenarios for the future
Crises tend to trigger fundamental changes in markets and customer needs. The most important question for making decisions about the safety of the current business model—and of current and future investments—is: what could the relevant environment for the company look like in the future?
Scenario planning helps answer that. The goal here isn't an exact prediction of the future; that's practically impossible. The goal is to prepare better for uncertainty, anticipate and confront change, and manage the company proactively. Starting from a prioritization of the crucial changes that will shape tomorrow's market, you then apply strategies and measures to adapt to the possible scenarios and benefit from them. To get a complete picture of possible futures, it's more useful to involve people with a broad range of knowledge and experience in the process.
2. Broaden perspectives and set priorities
Crises demand a change of mindset and perspective. Cutting costs alone, for instance, does not limit the risk of a crisis—you always run the risk of trading the risk of excess capacity for the risk of downsizing (as happened to many airlines during the pandemic). Instead of a downsizing approach based on limited data, a growth—or at least supportive—approach that involves the company's own employees leads not only to significant cost savings but also to reaching goals faster through implementation. The clearer picture of the organization's activities and projects that this approach creates helps set strategic priorities, and employee participation gives rise to innovative ideas for changing processes and new business opportunities.
A change of perspective is also useful for assessing investment risk during a crisis. Attention often centers on financial risk—the risk that an investment won't reach its expected return. But competitive risk is usually neglected: the risk that the company's competitive position deteriorates as a result of not investing. In other words, companies should ask themselves: what is the risk of not investing? It's important to balance financial risk against competitive risk. Based on a systematic evaluation of investment projects, unprofitable opportunities should be halted, while projects with the greatest potential shouldn't be lost and should be promoted instead. A constant review of all investment opportunities—regardless of market conditions—is valuable here.
3. Prioritize investments with risk management
In a crisis, companies need to cut costs and preserve capital to survive. But these measures shouldn't be applied indiscriminately across the whole company. Current and future revenue generators and growth engines should be protected or even expanded through increased investment.
Managing the company's assets takes on special importance here. This line of thinking originated in financial strategy: instead of investing all assets in a single type of investment, they should be spread across different types (for example, stocks and real estate), thereby managing the risk and return of the asset portfolio. The systematic use of tools to balance return and risk should also be applied to managing investments in times of crisis.
Risk management is an important concept at the personal level and even more so at the company level. Amid the changing conditions a crisis creates, managing assets helps select, prioritize, and initiate the right investment projects and allocate resources to them. A thorough evaluation of return and risk—and a balance among the different investment measures—is especially necessary when capital costs are higher and liquidity is lower. A balanced mix between investing in the existing business and developing new growth areas is essential. Companies must also answer whether every business unit still makes sense for the company or should be sold if necessary. The companies that emerged successfully from the 2007–2009 financial crisis sold business units and other assets more frequently than the less successful ones.
4. Act early and proactively
Because of the uncertainty tied to crises, companies often behave in a wait-and-see manner. That doesn't help in a crisis. The longer they take to react to signs of change in the environment, the more the company's freedom of action shrinks. Companies that prepare for change early and proactively can face it better and seize the opportunities it presents. Those opportunities arise in the following areas:
- It becomes easier to attract qualified talent while competitors cut costs by trimming jobs, salaries, and projects.
- Crises offer a good window for acquisitions. Some assets that were previously considered hard to sell may become available for purchase. Research during the 2007–2009 financial crisis shows that companies that made significant acquisitions economically outperformed those that didn't.
- In many companies, crises are seen as a bad time for innovation—ongoing projects are frozen or stopped and no new ones are launched. But crises can also be a good time for innovation to accelerate. A crisis creates greater urgency, and investment concentrates on the innovation projects with the highest expectations of success.
Conclusion
Crises shouldn't be perceived solely as a threat to companies. On the contrary, the opportunities that accompany a crisis should also be recognized and acted on. Companies emerge from crises as winners when they manage to balance short-term measures that prioritize survival with a long-term perspective applied through strategic investment.
Crises have always existed, and they will keep happening. They are not extraordinary—they are part of the economic cycle, and we should see and understand them as such. Are you also someone who takes a posture of growth, personally and in business, during a crisis? At Buying America, that's precisely the mindset we bring to international investors looking to enter and expand in the United States—turning uncertain moments into strategic openings.