Richard Branson on the Secret to Virgin's Sustained Success

Being an entrepreneur or small-business owner , If  you're an MBA or a pastry chef or an architect  one of the secret ingredients of building a business is by offering such useful products and terrific service that you disrupt the local market, winning customers away from your competitors. We at Virgin have done this with a particular focus on disruptive change. From our first ventures, like our music stores and record label, to some of our flagship businesses today, including our airlines and space tourism companies, we have approached business development proactively and opportunistically, looking for openings where we can surprise and delight customers by offering something truly different.

We have gradually refined this approach over the years, and we experienced our share of failures along the way. But by any measure, Virgin has been successful: Eight businesses that we've created, in eight completely different sectors, have an enterprise value of more than $1 billion.

Once we had that momentum going, success in one area tended to lead to success in other fields, and so it has been sustained. We built up an extensive network of relationships, and now entrepreneurs and companies often approach us with ideas for partnerships that will help them to start a new business, or to attract new customers. Other offers come from business leaders who are attracted by Virgin's profile, in hopes that their companies will benefit from our brand.

While we still rely on experience and our own reaction to a prospective pRuninroduct or service to decide whether or not to go ahead with the launch of a new company or partnership, these days our teams also use data about economic, consumer and population trends to evaluate the consumer experience and assess potential opportunities.

Link : entrepreneur