Richard Branson is one of the world’s best-known entrepreneurs. But the founder of Virgin is really two people: Sir Richard, the risk-taking, publicity-seeking adventurer; and Branson, the hard-headed private entrepreneur. The explosion of Virgin Galactic’s rocket ship above the Californian desert suggests it was foolish to confuse the two.
As an adventure, his effort to launch people into suborbital space on an air-launched rocket ship is quintessential Sir Richard. He has always been drawn to dangerous expeditions, from high-altitude ballooning to transatlantic sailing, and has dreamt of going to space since watching the first moon landing as a teenager. In the Victorian era. he might have been an explorer searching for the source of the Nile.
As businesses, his successes – from the Virgin music label to airlines and mobile telephony – are quite different. They do not flow from fundamental research on technology in the same waythat Boeing’s, Rolls-Royce’s and Google’s do. Virgin takes mature technologies and exploits them in a fresh way, with a focus on customer experience.