Richard Branson is the entrepreneur responsible for the foundation of the massive multidisciplinary company known as Virgin. The diversity and sheer success of Virgin across a number of different industries attracted us to Branson as he is the 'Only person to build 12 billion dollar companies in eight different sectors' (Virgin, 2020). By being a prominent figure throughout major industries such as travel, telecommunications, health, banking, music and leisure, Branson proves to be an admirable figure who has displayed many interesting entrepreneurial characteristics to get him to where he is today. One of these characteristics that led to us selecting him is his desire to 'Provoke positive change in the world' which is shown by how he launched the Virgin Earth Challenge in 2007 which aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Virgin, 2020). Branson has had this trait since a young age demonstrated by him starting a student advisory centre at the age of 17 in order to help young people deal with and resolve issues they may have (Virgin, 2020). Over the years Branson has utilised his drive to make positive change to recognise the opportunities that lie within the worlds many problems and then go on to innovate and then execute his ideas to result in ventures such as his Virgin Earth Challenge. More of Branson's intriguing entrepreneurial characteristics is his pure devotion, persistence and work ethic that he directs to his entrepreneurial ventures. This is reflected by him being awarded a knighthood for his 'Services to entrepreneurship' (Virgin, 2020) as being knighted is regarded as a huge honour and something that cannot be accomplished without making a monumental contribution within a field. This showcases Branson's great devotion and ability to traverse risk in order to achieve amazing feats in the world of business that not many people worldwide have the capacity to match and also his ability to seize opportunities and turn them into a venture that often proves world changing. It is this collective of traits that make up Branson's personality and philosophy that help him to not back down in the face of risk. His attitude toward risk is summarised by his quote, "If you allow the fear of failure to become a barrier you're already putting roadblocks in your way" (Coleman, 2020) and it is this straightforward belief that guided the entrepreneur through a number of risks, for example, the launch of Virgin galactic which was something unprecedented at the time and extremely risky due to the strong limitations and complication surrounding space travel. Branson has also been a strong catalyst for social development, demonstrated through his formation of non-profit organisation Virgin Unite which has the purpose of addressing and providing solutions for difficult social and environmental issues (Virgin, 2020). It is through Virgin Unite that Branson supports projects that he believes are important with examples involving social issues such as drug policy reform, advocacy for LGBT rights and the death penalty (Virgin Unite, 2020). Virgin Unite is based on Branson's idea of uniting people and entrepreneurial ideas to 'Create opportunities for a better world' and it has proven effective as the company has accomplished things like developed clean energy in Uganda, Rwanda and Sierra Leone and is currently looking into ways to best attempt to transition into a sustainable economy amidst the Covid-19 pandemic (Virgin Unite, 2020). Overall, Richard Branson possesses a truly remarkable entrepreneurial mind and strong characteristics and beliefs that carry him and have not gone to waste as he has a hand in many business ventures that seek to change the world and make it a more sustainable, socially sound and economically stable place for everyone to enjoy into the future.

Part B:

Swot Analysis of Virgin Company

Strengths-

• Virgin is diverse across many key industries, such as Travel, music, health, telecommunications and leisure
• Boasts 12 separate billion dollar companies across 8 different sectors (Virgin, 2020)
• Strong value for sustainability and willingness to resolve global issues shown through the foundation of Virgin Unite
• Brand is a household name recognised globally with a strong reputation and trust
• Has a strong technology focus with over 35 companies within technology based sectors (Virgin, 2020)
• Serves around 53 million customers worldwide as well as employs 69,000 employees across 35 countries, thus showing the companies advanced level of globalisation (Virgin, 2020)
• Huge reach via social media with over 37 million followers across major platforms (Virgin 2020)
• 99% brand recognition across the UK, Australia and France (Virgin 2020)

Weaknesses-

• Having this large number of companies can result in some of them lacking as there is a lot to manage, could suffer problems like bad publicity if mistakes are made.
• Difficulty of supervision would be felt by higher ups in Virgin as there are many sectors to overview and make sure are on track with company goals
• Strong competition, especially with Virgin galactic competing with SpaceX and similar companies, also Virgin Airways with lower cost airlines

Opportunities-

• Make use of the brands strength in technology to benefit companies in other sectors, equipping them with new, user friendly, innovative technology
• Potential to accomplish unprecedented achievements with Virgin Galactic's aims for commercial space flight
• Utilise areas such as travel that are easy to globalise to move into new countries
• Focus more on sectors with high growth, such as entertainment and media industry

Threats-

• Underachieving leadership upon Branson's retirement
• Current Covid-19 pandemic effects on the economy
• Problems occurring in one Virgin company have the potential to weaken the reputation of the entire brand
• Brexit effects on the UK economy

Recommendations-

Virgin Group should look to take advantage of their strength of having a heavy technology focus which could allow them the opportunity to make innovative upgrades to their customer service. Virgin could do this through the development of human enhancement technology, a form of technology that is currently benefiting select industries and has great future potential to advance retail, sales and customer service (Grewal et al., 2020). By utilising their strong involvement in technology industries, Virgin could perhaps develop a form of human enhancement technology revolving around augmented hearing so to overcome language barriers with ease as the company has relationships with many different countries spanning a large variety of languages. Currently there are forms of devices being developed that translate multiple languages in real time with the goal of achieving worldwide communication (Grewal et al., 2020), and with Virgin being able to innovate and create their own, they could enhance their customer service globally.

Another opportunity Virgin should take advantage of is the potential to expand into new countries by using their existing assets. By being a prominent figure within the travel industry, particularly by air, this allows a heightened opportunity to do business with new countries as airlines are one of the easier industries to integrate overseas. Taking advantage of this would prove profitable for Virgin as there is always a market for people wanting to go to specific places, and if Virgin has ties with all these places, consumers will look no further than Virgin.

To mitigate their weaknesses and threats, Virgin should look to gain performance feedback for all their many companies from consumers, managers and higher ups as research shows that performance feedback is an effective way of improving overall performance (Snchez-Expsito and Naranjo-Gil, 2020). Through questionnaires taken by consumers or performance analysis undertaken by managers, Virgin could use this feedback to improve their operations across all their companies so to avoid their main threat of the entire brand taking a negative hit from the slip up of only one of it's companies as individual companies are less likely to make mistakes if they take advantage of feedback provided to them.

question: Summarise what have you learnt from researching the entrepreneur and their business venture?

Explain how will you apply this learning in your business venture?