Virgin Corporate Strategy
VIRGIN’S GROUP CORPORATE STRATEGY
DIVERSIFICATION
1. Introduction
The Virgin Group is one of Britain’s biggest and successful empires in the 21st century. The company has successfully incorporated a great number of diverse industries under the Virgin brand. This includes travel, mobile, financial services, leisure, cosmetics, retail, and music businesses. Virgin has been able to dominate the British market and has therefore continued to rapidly expand into other regions such as the United States, Canada and Australia. The enterprise was founded by Sir Richard Branson in 1970 as a simple mail-order record retailer and has grown into one of the most prosperous business empires in the business world.
To date, the Virgin Group has globalized and established in over 200 small to mid-sized firms, employing over 25,000 people. As a result, the company has exceeded over $7 billion in revenue in 2002. Each one of Virgin’s 200 firms operates as a single entity. Branson either holds ownership of a firm as CEO, or has a minority or majority stake. The Virgin Group does not hold a hierarchal presence within the empire, which allowed its various subsidiaries to operate in an autonomous manner. 2. Richard Branson: The strategic thinking
As the creator of Virgin and a famous personality around the world, Richard Branson has created an entrepreneurial culture that is carried throughout the Virgin group of companies. His anti-corporation and anti-bureaucracy spirit resulted in a flat organizational structure with transparency and quick communication; his loyalty and care for friends let to an organization with great employee focus, and also attracted some of the best people to work for him for a moderate salary.
Looking into his kind of strategic thinking, we can see that it is characterized by having a strong relationship with risk. His attitude towards risk is explorative, willing to take risks in order to enter into completely new businesses that the company
DIVERSIFICATION
1. Introduction
The Virgin Group is one of Britain’s biggest and successful empires in the 21st century. The company has successfully incorporated a great number of diverse industries under the Virgin brand. This includes travel, mobile, financial services, leisure, cosmetics, retail, and music businesses. Virgin has been able to dominate the British market and has therefore continued to rapidly expand into other regions such as the United States, Canada and Australia. The enterprise was founded by Sir Richard Branson in 1970 as a simple mail-order record retailer and has grown into one of the most prosperous business empires in the business world.
To date, the Virgin Group has globalized and established in over 200 small to mid-sized firms, employing over 25,000 people. As a result, the company has exceeded over $7 billion in revenue in 2002. Each one of Virgin’s 200 firms operates as a single entity. Branson either holds ownership of a firm as CEO, or has a minority or majority stake. The Virgin Group does not hold a hierarchal presence within the empire, which allowed its various subsidiaries to operate in an autonomous manner. 2. Richard Branson: The strategic thinking
As the creator of Virgin and a famous personality around the world, Richard Branson has created an entrepreneurial culture that is carried throughout the Virgin group of companies. His anti-corporation and anti-bureaucracy spirit resulted in a flat organizational structure with transparency and quick communication; his loyalty and care for friends let to an organization with great employee focus, and also attracted some of the best people to work for him for a moderate salary.
Looking into his kind of strategic thinking, we can see that it is characterized by having a strong relationship with risk. His attitude towards risk is explorative, willing to take risks in order to enter into completely new businesses that the company