Richard Branson: Life at 30,000 feet
Chris Anderson: Welcome to TED.
体能训练Richard Branson: Thank you very much. The first TED has been great.
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CA: Have you met anyone interesting?
RB: Well, the nice thing about TED is everybody's interesting. I was very glad to e Goldie Hawn, becau I had an apology to make to her. I'd had dinner with her about two years ago and I'd -- she had this big wedding ring and I put it on my finger and I couldn't get it off. And I went home to my wife that night and she wanted to know why I had another woman's big, massive, big wedding ring on my finger. And, anyway, the next morning we had to go along to the jeweler and get it cut off. So -- (Laughter) -- so apologies to Goldie.聚和
CA: That's pretty good. So, we're going to put up some slides of some of your companies here. You've started one or two in your time. So, you know, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Records -- I guess it all started with a magazine called Student. And then, yes, all the other ones as
well. I mean, how do you do this?
RB: I read all the sort of TED instructions: you must not talk about your own business, and this, and now you ask me. So I suppo you're not going to be able to kick me off the stage, since you asked the question. (Laughter)
CA: It depends what the answer is though.
RB: No, I mean, I think I learned early on that if you can run one company, you can really run any companies. I mean, companies are all about finding the right people, inspiring tho people, you know, drawing out the best in people. And I just love learning and I'm incredibly inquisitive and I love taking on, you know, the status quo and trying to turn it upside down. So I've en life as one long learning process. And if I e -- you know, if I fly on somebody el's airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn't, 21 years ago, then I'd think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I'd like to fly on. And so, you know, so got one condhand 747 from Boeing and gave it a go.
CA: Well, that was a bizarre thing, becau you made this move that a lot of people advid you was crazy. And in fact, in a way, it almost took down your empire at one point. I had a conversation with one of the investment bankers who, at the time when you basically sold Virgin Records and invested heavily in Virgin Atlantic, and his view was that you were trading, you know, the world's fourth biggest record company for the twenty-fifth biggest airline and that you were out of your mind. Why did you do that?
RB: Well, I think that there's a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you're likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line. We had -- we were being attacked by British Airways. They were trying to put our airline out of business, and they launched what's become known as the dirty tricks campaign. And I realized that the whole empire was likely to come crashing down unless I chipped in a chip. And in order to protect the jobs of the people who worked for the airline, and protect the jobs of the people who worked for the record company, I had to ll the family jewelry to protect the airline.
CA: Post-Napster, you're looking like a bit of a genius, actually, for that as well.
逻辑思维是什么意思RB: Yeah, as it turned out, it proved to be the right move. But, yeah, it was sad at the time, but we moved on.
CA: Now, you u the Virgin brand a lot and it ems like you're getting synergy from one thing to the other. What does the brand stand for in your head?
RB: Well, I like to think it stands for quality, that you know, if somebody comes across a Virgin company, they --
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中成伟业CA: They are quality, Richard. Come on now, everyone says quality. Spirit?
RB: No, but I was going to move on this. We have a lot of fun and I think the people who work for it enjoy it. As I say, we go in and shake up other industries, and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that industries are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.
CA: I mean, there are a few launches you've done where the brand maybe hasn't worked quite as well. I mean, Virgin Brides -- what happened there? (Laughter)
RB: We couldn't find any customers. (Laughter) (Applau)
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CA: I was actually also curious why -- I think you misd an opportunity with your condoms launch. You called it Mates. I mean, couldn't you have ud the Virgin brand for that as well? Ain't virgin no longer, or something.
RB: Again, we may have had problems finding customers. I mean, we had -- often, when you launch a company and you get customer complaints, you know, you can deal with them. But about three months after the launch of the condom company, I had a letter, a complaint, and I sat down and wrote a long letter back to this lady apologizing profuly. But obviously, there wasn't a lot I could do about it. And then six months later, or nine months after the problem had taken, I got this delightful letter with a picture of the baby asking if I'd be godfather, which I became. So, it all worked out well.
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