Virgin Group: Finding New Avenues for Growth

Virgin is a leading international investment group and one of the most respected and recognized brands in the world. It has been one of the fastest growing companies in the world since its inception. Conceived in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson as a music mail-in service, the company has gone to grow as one of the largest companies in UK. Today, Virgin group has more than 400 companies worldwide in 34 different countries and with global revenues of $21 billion, as of 2011. How the group grew so fast has intrigued many analysts. While there are many factors that contributed to the rapid growth of the Virgin group, it is its company structure and company culture that has powered
2). This left management struggling to be as efficient as possible without the expected help from Branson. Another problem Virgin faced was its choices in certain investments. Some investments were made that were completely unconnected. For example, the investment in Cola, which did not fit in anywhere with the company. This was actually an investment that Branson overruled the decision by the investment advisory board (Corsi, 11). Cola eventually ended up failing for Virgin (Corsi, pg. 11).
Branson is known for being a risk taker and jumping into investments. Due to his thrill-seeking mentality and passion to enter new industries, he needs to hire a team to help make investing decisions that are on the same page as him but also know how far to go with risks. By having a team in place, they can tell him when his ideas are a little too far-fetched. Also, instead of investing in anything and everything, Virgin needs to solely invest in larger and well established companies that are already strong rather than struggling start-up companies which it has been doing in the past. Virgin is spending too much money in effort to save the struggling companies and not making a significant return on the investment. The company needs to downsize the number of failing companies in industries with little growth opportunities; these companies will not bring in revenue. Countless dollars and valuable efforts are being spent to save these companies that cannot even compete