Business Stripped Bare by R. Branson Analysis - Book Report/Review Example

Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur Book Review [Pick the [Type the company muntazir Introduction The book under review is Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur. The book’s written by Sir Richard Branson; and is easily and widely available. It can be purchased from Amazon at £ 10.49 for a paper back edition. The book’s author Sir Richard Branson sheds light on his business life – from his entry into different business areas to specifically managing a particular area in the business function such as Human Resources. Crisis management, his aspired people, his successful and not so successful areas he ventured into. The messages regarding courage, failure, life etc. he gives in his book are truly awe inspiring. Something about the Organization - Virgin Group The entrepreneurial group functions as a venture capital company, penetrating into sectors including telecom (mobile telephony), travel and tourism, financial services (banking and insurance), transportation (airline), social and environment, music (most of all!) and other media related – media, publishing and also retailing. The business is spread across the globe with operations in Africa, Asia, Europe, United States, Canada etc. The core idea is to leverage the brand Virgin. The group does not own all businesses by itself fully and each of these businesses operates as a separate entity with the owner holding varied interest positions. Overview of the book – Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur The book covers over a 300 pages, and is partitioned into 8 areas – these eight sections cover each of the basic building blocks that put life in to the business, namely, People; Brand; Delivery; Learning from Mistakes and Setbacks; Innovation; Entrepreneurs and Leadership; and lastly, Social Responsibility. The book is about how Sir Richard Branson, as a leader of the vessel carried it into the sea. All points of views presented are from his own experiences and it never talks about the approach that “one size fits all”. So, all in all, we can say this book is about leadership and the motivation to march forward, expand the business portfolio - geographically and the product offering wise. Analysis People - In the analysis we will apply all these chapters and what Richard Branson has encapsulated in his books to his very own organization. To start off with, people who are an important resource of the organization and without whom the business is just closed walls. Thus, at Virgin the environment is full of life; like all organizations Virgin Group employees people that are intelligent. One of the focus is on increasing worker participation and motivation by developing a sense of responsibility and ownership amongst themselves – parties, fun and care is the essence of the work atmosphere at the Virgin Group companies. Brand – In 2007, a research company conducted a survey taking a nationally representative sample of 2000 people. These 2000 adults with 23% of their votes voted Virgin as the most admired brand. This shows the motto behind the brand Virgin, i.e. Flying the Flag. The brand strives to provide people value for their money, the embedded quality coupled with innovation and a continuous improvement and innovation to make the customer feel the challenge and experience the difference. Every new venture pre its onset is evaluated keeping the target market in mind; a potential business is evaluated not just on terms of the bottom line but how better it can serve the customer, penetrate the market by obtaining a competitive advantage and whether a niche can be established in that area or not. Proper risk and rewards are weighed to evaluate the trade off. Here, Sir Richard Branson exemplifies his experience with Virgin Blue’s entry into the Australian market; the way opportunity was capitalized when Ansett failed in the same, followed by expanding gradually with competitor driving out of the business. A distinct identity of the brand was created with typical Virgin strategy of naming its aircrafts with female names and associated words; but a local Australian touch was also given at the same time. DELIVERY – its all about approaching the customer by taking advantage of the opportunity. Virgin Trains, a train operating company in United Kingdom entered into business at the right time, when British Rail was privatized and obtained bids for Inter City West Coast and Inter City Cross County. Bringing for the travelers, first ever, high speed, tilting Pendolino train, with technology that provided acceleration of 0 to 100 miles per hour in a matter of 100 seconds; thus brining in so called red revolution to the industry. Another company Virgin Records, that brought revolution to the British record label industry. The company started of after the success of a magazine, Student. After this undertaking and taking advantage of the changes in law, Richard Branson started selling records at discounted prices – scales shot up like any thing, mail order deliveries increased and increased, this led to setting up of a discount record shop, which ultimately became hit, followed by opening up of huge record stores. LEARNING FROM MISTAKES & SETBACKS – DAMAGE REPORT – The creation of a large business empire, is not a simple, lucky process; the huge business was set up with trial and error method – with some ventures succeeding and others failing; its getting up every time one falls which counts. An example Sir Richard Branson quotes is that of failure in acquiring Northern Rock, a bank. A huge setback was faced when Sir Richard Branson’s had proposed to inject £ 650 million into the bank, including £ 200 million of his own money. Another £ 650 million was to be raised by issuing new shares amounting to 2.6 billion, each costing 25 pence each. But the competition faced in the acquisition process led to the failure as other bidders believed that it was robbing of the taxpayers and Sir Richard Branson is not offering the best price. INNOVATION – the main driver of the business that fuels profitability and brings in new customers; all businesses of the Virgin Group derive their value based on the research driven process. Mortimer in 2002 tagged Virgin Group as an innovative company that can be applauded for promoting new and bold ideas and conceiving of those ideas into development of new businesses for the group. Innovation is the blood of the company and therefore, it is one of the values that the organization treasures. All levels of employess including CEO to entry level posts are encouraged to give and bring up new ideas and approaches of doing things. Innovation not only in new business venturing but also product innovation is a crucial aspect of the group operations. The organization is recognized for creating new offers for its customers, based on observation and listening. Innovation at the company level is a key ingredient in the development of new ideas, making business simple for customers while building success through the development of new products. Executives at Virgin believe that ideas will be successful if initiators truly believe that they will make a difference in people’s lives or in the market (Mortimer, 2002). ENTREPRENEURS & LEADERSHIP – Holding and letting go – He just not limits to his experiences but talks about how Nelson Mandela’s leadership led to the Global Elders program in 1999. The Global Elders program with the partnership of Sir Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel united world leaders on a single platform to support global village. The traditional villages were the prime focus with the target of resolving conflicts within the communities. SOCIAL RESOPONSIBILITY – the emerging concepts of corporate social responsibility that raises the obligations of the business to stakeholders including the society in which it operates and requires us to return something back to it. Not only a business man, but Sir Richard Branson has a philanthropic side to his personality. Over the time he committed huge amounts of his profits from group companies including Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains. He has given loads of money to educational charities in Africa. This nature of his has been since he was 17 years of age; he is pursuing health education campaigns related to aids, protests and campaigns against tobacco. His efforts have led him to be a trustee of many charities including Health Care Foundation. Further, with Virgin brand name, he started a campaign known as Virgin Unite – with this campaign he involved people and assets from his business to campaign in challenges faced in regarding HIV / aids, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria. In true billionaire philanthropist form Sir Richard Branson says, "With extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference." Reference Virgin Group. Retrieved from virgin.com Mortimer, R. (2002). Virginal risks and blessings. Brand Strategy, (163), 23. Read More