We mentioned that Sir Richard was doing a webcast recently, but due to scheduling conflicts, didn’t actually see the webcast ourselves. So, it’s great to see that Knowledge@Wharton has a good summary of the event. Branson covers several topics, including the perennial favorite question of how his own fame translates into branding opportunities for the Virgin Group. He also discussed the delegation required to run 350+ companies simultaneously…  

Trust in managers and employees is particularly important as Branson looks to build Virgin. Adding more companies to the cache makes it that much more difficult to be everywhere at once. Yet, for Branson, expansion is always a priority. "Virgin is an unusual brand," he notes, because it is a "way of life" brand, unlike Western brands like Coca-Cola or Nike that focus on one type of product. Virgin challenges big businesses in completely different sectors. "In Nigeria, we’ve been asked to set up a national airline," he explains. "In India, we’re going to build a phone company. In South Africa, the financial services industry is still stuck 30 years back with incredibly high prices. We’re looking at getting in there and shaking up the industry. In America, we’re looking at space travel. Around the world we’re looking at taking the brand into a number of different industries. Our criterion is, will it fulfill the Virgin yardstick of being good value for the money? Will it enhance the brand by bringing great quality? Will we have fun doing it and can we make it profitable? If those criteria work, then we’ll seriously look at a new industry."

Funniest bit was an anecdote of a male admirer in New Zealand who told him, "Richard, I love you. I wish you were gay — and that I were gay too!" Ahh, the always-interesting life of Sir Richard Branson…