Managing in a downturn

Last November (2008) the recession began to hurt. The Bank of England quibbled over the exact moment that it had actually started (stating it was mid-2008), but the point is: how much worse can it get, how long will it take before recovery is in sight, and how can companies adapt to face a situation much worse than previous downturns and survive? Now we are officially in a global recession, the big question is what are we going to do about it? Are engineering companies adapting and implementing new strategies to cope with the downturn?