Richard Branson is a high school dropout. He’s been to jail. He has a beard and wears his shirt with four buttons undone. He’s not your typical multibillionaire-businessman, but just 39 years ago, Branson founded the first of his 200+ companies: Virgin Music.
This entrepreneur is anything but predictable; a known rebel, Branson is no rookie at the game of risk, one of the major characteristics of entrepreneurialism. Since its inception in 1970, Virgin has taken on the unexpected industries of air travel, cellular phones, and even aerospace – and succeeded in all of them. In the air, Virgin invented the seat-back personal televisions; down on earth, Virgin Mobile made a lifestyle out of mobile phones.
Richard Branson didn’t invent the airplane, nor did he conceive the idea of wireless telephones. Rather, his company took ideas that had been around for a while and made them innovative and cool. Virgin was set up to be a hothouse of innovation – a pioneer in any and all industries. Instead of coming up with new products, Virgin shakes up the market and boldly emblazons itself with a competitive edge, embodying the spirit of its entrepreneurial founder. As far as business goes, Virgin’s very namesake suggests: If everybody’s doing it, do something else.
