Richard Branson On Inclusive Culture
March 8, 2016 Leave a comment
Branson’s Regret
October 23, 2013 5 Comments
Sir Richard Branson,founder of Virgin Atlantic,has one regret he feels hard to live down:his assumption that he could knock Coca Cola to World’s No.2 soft drink by launching Virgin Cola:
“It taught me that if you have to take on someone bigger,you have got to be much better.”
The Birth Of Virgin Atlantic
August 21, 2013 2 Comments
“In ’79, when Joan, my fiancee and I were on a holiday in the British Virgin Islands, we were trying to catch a flight to Puerto Rico; but the local Puerto Rican scheduled flight was cancelled. The airport terminal was full of stranded passengers. I made a few calls to charter companies and agreed to charter a plane for $2000 to Puerto Rico. Cheekily leaving out Joan’s and my name, I divided the price by the remaining number of passengers, borrowed a blackboard and wrote: VIRGIN AIRWAYS: $39 for a single flight to Puerto Rico. I walked around the airport terminal and soon filled every seat on the charter plane. As we landed at Puerto Rico, a passenger turned to me and said: “Virgin Airways isn’t too bad – smarten up the services a little and you could be in business.When VA was launched in ’84, not one person thought it would survive for more than a year. The bosses of these 13 big American airlines, that we competed with, said we’d fail. Now 21 years later, all 13 of them are out of business – proving the number 13 is unlucky for some.”- Sir Richard Branson
So you see,every one of your problems,is an opportunity to get started in business.
Learning From Sir Richard Branson
August 9, 2012 16 Comments
Here is what Sir Richard has to say:
1. On big companies vs. small companies
“Small is beautiful.” Sir Richard doesn’t see size as a competitive advantage.
His Virgin Records label is not the biggest in the music industry, but in 1992 it attracted the Rolling Stones. Virgin Airlines has a mere 37 airplanes versus the 700+ maintained by its competitors. It’s better to spin off a company into a second smaller company (as Virgin Atlantic spun off Virgin America) than grow larger, Sir Richard believes, because smaller companies can stay both more nimble and more customer-focused. They can also maintain the style and “cheekiness” of their early trailblazing if they stay relatively compact. Read more of this post
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