What orbitmic said tends to reflect my own feelings about this too. It is not about any particular sector of society (business leaders, politicians, etc...) but rather French society as a whole. Looking at France from the outside, it is difficult not be struck at how self-referential public discourse in France is. When there is reference to outside, it is all too often based on broad caricatures that bear only a distant resemblance to reality (think of how the "anglo-saxon" world is typically depicted in France) and are often as a result quickly dismissed as irrelevant to meaningful discourse.

In turn, this also often makes it difficult for France to make its case abroad as there is not have enough understanding of outside to be able to "translate" in a language that is understood elsewhere.