Richard Branson on Failure in Business

Interesting post Padre, consider this on a global scale. Prominent economist W. W. Rostow created a model for underdeveloped countries to achieve success through hard work and perseverance called "developmentalism". His theory was unilaterally shot down by most social scientists and geographers. This is straight from my textbook "Human Geography"...
"Furthermore, Rostow's model perpetuates the myth of "developmentalism," the idea that every country and region will eventually make economic progress toward "high mass consumption" provided that they compete to the best of their ability within the world economy. The main weakness of developmentalism is that it is simply not reasonable to compare the prospects of late starters to the experiences of those places, regions, and countries that were among the early starters. For these early starters the horizons were clear: free of effective competition, free of obstacles, and free of precedents. For the late starters the situation is entirely different. Today's less developed regions must compete in a crowded field while facing numerous barriers that are a direct consequence of the success of the early starters.
Indeed, many writers and theorists of international development claim that the prosperity of the core countries in the world economy has been based on the underdevelopment and squalor of peripheral countries. Peripheral countries, it is argued, could not "follow" the previous historical experience of developed countries in stages-of-development fashion because their underdevelopment (that is, exploitation) was a structural requirement for development elsewhere. The development of Europe and North America, in other words, required the systematic underdevelopment of peripheral countries"

or put more clearly by Andre' Gunder Frank: Development somewhere requires underdevelopment somewhere else.

Now to pull it back into the scope of Richard Branson. Per Wikipedia: "Branson started business after he travelled across the English Channel and purchased crates of "cut-out" records from a record discounter.[citation needed] He sold the records out of the boot of his car to retail outlets in London. He continued selling cut-outs through a record mail order business in 1970. Trading under the name "Virgin", he sold records for considerably less than the "High Street" outlets, especially the chain W. H. Smith. The name "Virgin" was suggested by one of Branson's early employees because they were all new at business.[10] At the time, many products were sold under restrictive marketing agreements that limited discounting, despite efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to limit so-called resale price maintenance.[11] In effect, Branson began the series of changes that led to large-scale discounting of recorded music."

I think hard work and determination can never be understated, but it seems clear that one needs an exploitable angle and an early start (two things Branson had going for him) in order to realistically achieve success. Like Branson said in the video, 80% of small businesses will fail.

 

Okay, how on Earth did you gather those premises from what I wrote? I was trying to raise the point that Branson was a pioneer in selling cut-outs; i.e. he had an early start (no competition) in an industry that allowed him to buy merchandise extremely cheap (exploitable angle). I mirrored his personal experience with that of peripheral countries trying to duplicate what core countries have already been through. The reality being that no matter how hard they work, the idea of catching up isn't so easy or simple. I think they're important points to consider is all...

 

Are you Greek, Padre?