Branson's Answers

  High-flying Richard Branson has been on a decades-long quest for answers to the big questions that face us.  His iconic status has put him at the forefront of the Conversation of a Generation.  He has created a forum for discussion that he calls Capitalism 24902 (the measure of the circumference of the earth). 

No anti-capitalist, Branson has been profit-making from the growing unrest over monopolistic free-booting that marks the genre.  He was demonstrating his dissent with single-purpose profiteering long before Occupy Wall Street became a cry for fairness and equity in the streets of America.  As such, he embodies the hope that enterprises can be self-sustaining, profitable and provoke social change.

Branson’s latest gambit is a book called Screw Business as Usual, which backgrounds his version of what The Economist calls his “philanthrocapitalism” in its latest issue.  The spark for this discussion is a fire that recently levelled his house on Necker Island, off the coast of Virgin Gorda and one of the minor British Virgins.  Necker Island is where Branson has huddled with rock stars, innovators and icons of equity and fairness like Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela to talk about ways to change the world.

A Caribbean retreat is a long way from the cold concrete squats of middle America.  So are the third world conditions Branson wants to correct.  But the principle of making more with lemons than mere personal fortunes is central to both trains of thought. 

Branson’s new book can be a primer for anyone who thinks seriously about where the “Occupy” movement could turn its attention next.