Richard Nicholas Branson Case Study

How does one drop out of high school and build a multi-billion dollar empire? Vision, this is exactly what Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson has. Branson was born in London on July 18, 1950 into a typical English middle-class family that in some cases were struggling to get by. His father, Edward Branson was a struggling barrister who was not making enough to cover the expenses of his family, and his mother Eve made every attempt to make extra income for the family. His parents would shut off the electricity in the house while there children were sleeping to cut back on electricity bills, Richard stated a vivid childhood memory “struggling through dark corridors to find the loo” (Branson, 2008). Branson has a case of dyslexia and struggled

Branson eventually sold the Virgin Label for $1 billion so he could keep his airline company alive, this was a disheartening moment in his career because he had to let the foundation of his now empire slip away, but he says sometimes you need to “consider getting smaller in order to get bigger (Dearlove, 2007).” He says this was his business strategy all along, instead of growing one company he prefers to set up individual companies allowing lower level employees to run smaller entities. This has brought him great success and he claims is less risky, his original record label wasn’t just one chain, instead it was 32 smaller record companies each ran by a different person. After the sale of his record label he focused on his airline company Virgin Atlantic, which battled head to head with British Airways. The rise of Virgin Atlantic was rapid and British Airways saw them as a big threat so British Airways conducted a series of foul play acts to decrease the reputation of Virgin Atlantic. This was all settled in court in which Branson successfully sued British airways for roughly $8 million (Branson, 2008). Traveling is the target market for Virgins more recent endeavors as Branson has invested in a train company, more fuel-efficient travel and his most recent project Virgin Galactic. One thing that the Virgin group does to differentiate

Having over 400 companies must take a ridiculous amount of time to manage leaving little time to enjoy the wealth Branson has earned or at least one would think. Branson is different from most CEO’s; there isn’t enough time in a day, week, month or even a year for him to manage every aspect of the Virgin Group so he has taken a different approach. Branson commonly refers to Steve Job’s, his entrepreneurial hero, style of leadership saying he was autocratic and made Apple a great company by selecting employees that were like-minded and would follow his every instruction, but this isn’t how Branson leads. Instead of managing everyone and being a somewhat of a dictator within his companies, Branson believes in his staff and gives them a lot of control over the business. His priorities in his business is to put his employees first, customers second, and investors third. He shows this by carefully selecting people within the company who he thinks can run a specific company within the Virgin Group better then he himself, then he delegates the particular business to this person or persons (Vries, 2003). This allows for people to in a sense be there own boss, call the shots and if something fails he pushes his employees to keep trying and to never give up. Richard says, “that if you are not always there, it forces other