SLOWING down seems to be the last thing on Sir Richard Branson’s
mind. Since turning 62 in July, the bearded British entrepreneur has as
usual been making headlines around the world. On October 3rd he
celebrated victory in a campaign to overturn the British government’s
decision to strip Virgin Trains, of which his Virgin Group owns 51%, of
the West Coast main-line rail franchise. The government now admits it
got its sums wrong, as Sir Richard had claimed, and the bidding process
will be rerun (see
article).
Recently Sir Richard has also been in the news for (among other things)
urging Barack Obama and Mitt Romney to end America’s war on drugs;
declaring his intention to visit Mars; and parking a mock-up of the new
Upper Class bar from his transatlantic aircraft outside the New York
Stock Exchange. From there he promoted his latest book (“Like A Virgin:
Secrets They Won’t Teach You at Business School”) and led a discussion
with his Twitter followers. The subject under discussion was: “How can
business change the world for the better?”
This last topic has become increasingly central to Brand Branson in
the past few years—although social activism has been part of Sir
Richard’s repertoire since he opened advice centres for students in the
1960s. Under Virgin Unite, its charitable arm, his corporate empire has
become a leader in the booming business of “cause marketing” (aligning
brands with charities). Sir Richard has even updated his old creed of
“have fun and the money will come” to “do good, have fun and the money
will come.” He has also launched a couple of much bigger ideas. One, the
result of conversations he had with Nelson Mandela and Peter Gabriel,
is the Elders, a group of veteran statesmen (including Jimmy Carter,
Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson) who work together to provide advice to
today’s politicians. The second is the Carbon War Room, an attempt to
bring business leaders together to find profitable ways to reduce
fossil-fuel use in the most carbon-intensive industries, including Sir
Richard’s beloved airline business. On October 3rd, a few hours after
his win against the British government, Sir Richard began to roll out a
third initiative, which he has christened the B Team.
Experienced watchers of Sir Richard may suspect that the B is for
Branson, but Schumpeter is informed that it refers both to business and
to the need for a “Plan B” for capitalism. The idea is to form a small
group of business leaders who will campaign for reforms to make
capitalism more oriented to the long term and socially more responsible.
Needless to say, they will bear no resemblance to the A-Team, whom fans
of 1980s television will recall as a bunch of mercenaries who everyone
assumed were in it for themselves but in fact wanted to save the world.
If you have a problem, if no one else can help…
The B Team will have two co-chairmen: Sir Richard and Jochen Zeitz,
who as boss of Puma, a German sporting-goods firm, introduced a
celebrated ethical programme based on being “fair, honest, positive and
creative”. Other members are being recruited, from both rich and
developing countries, before a formal launch early next year. The idea
is that each member will champion a particular reform and work with the
others to get all the reforms adopted. A consultation exercise is
already under way to find which reforms are ripe to be pushed through.
Proper accounting for environmental impact, an end to quarterly
reporting of results and the phasing-out of fossil-fuel subsidies are
likely to be near the top of the list.
Though popular for a businessman, Sir Richard also has plenty of
critics, especially at home in Britain, where relentless self-promotion
is still frowned on. They will no doubt regard this new campaign as the
latest example of his hubris. Despite the beard and his fondness for
woolly jumpers, he is no cuddly capitalist. Nor is he yet a great
philanthropist: his pledge to leave 10% of his estate to charity pales
beside the promise to give away most of their wealth made by signatories
of the Giving Pledge for American billionaires launched by Bill Gates
and Warren Buffett. Yet you do not have to be a saint to be an effective
reformer, and a striking thing about Sir Richard’s recent do-gooding
initiatives is that they have been grounded in an acute understanding of
the practicalities of how to make change happen.
After a slow start, the Elders have started to show that with the
right back-office support, a group of political big beasts can work
effectively together, whether behind the scenes (peacemaking in Cyprus,
Kenya and Sudan, for instance) or publicly, with their campaign against
child marriage. The B Team will likewise have independent financing and a
strong support staff, although it will not be quite the direct replica,
the Business Elders, that Sir Richard envisaged at first. There were
too few candidates from the business world of sufficiently unimpeachable
character, it seems, and, more positively, some members of the B Team
are likely to be relatively young. Instead, the plan is for the B Team
to consist of people who have done business in a way that fits the
guiding principles, such as Mr Zeitz, perhaps Ben Cohen (of Ben &
Jerry’s ice cream) or Paul Polman, who is trying to double Unilever’s
revenues while halving its environmental footprint.
The B Team will also share the Carbon War Room’s focus on promoting
only those changes that have both a big potential impact and a good
chance of being achieved. The War Room, for instance, quickly identified
$50 billion in potential savings in the shipping industry from better
energy use: those savings are now being sought by leading firms. One
reason to be optimistic is that many of these reforms have strong
support from the generation of leaders now rising to the top of the
corporate world, who are often deeply unhappy with the practices and
norms bequeathed by their elders—other than Sir Richard, of course.
-
Sep 29th
Some sensible ideas for reviving America’s entrepreneurial spirit
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