Business Stripped Bare

Today Google attracts the brightest technical talent. I love the idea that employees are encouraged to generate and develop new ideas, and that technical staff spend 20 per cent of their work time doing something they choose to do. By giving their people ownership over their work in this way, the company and its customers have benefited enormously. Among many other innovations, this scheme has brought us Gmail, Adsense, Google Earth, Google Maps and Google News, which aggregates headlines from around the world. The company excels at IT and business architecture. It continually conducts experiments to test its system, and then improvises and improves, and it has a backbone of people who are acutely analytical.

Sergey and Larry understood early on that they are not managers. Their trade now is in finding ideas and turning them into businesses or other enterprises. While they conceived Google and built it, they also found a brilliant CEO in Eric Schmidt, who runs the company on a day-to-day level. Eric was the CEO of Novell, and he also sits on the board of Apple. He is steeped in the technology world but he knows how to deal with financial matters and the investment community. This is a classic example of how the roles of entrepreneur and manager can be separated — a theme explored further in the next chapter. At Google, both sides of the business are given room to breathe. Eric’s day-to-day management of the company allows Sergey and Larry to commit themselves to the search for new ideas — and to enjoy some of their wealth!

One of our Virgin team was visiting Google’s HQ in Mountain View and told me they have an enormous whiteboard detailing the strategy of Google. It is Google’s Master Plan and there are thousands of ideas on the board, all contributed by the employees. One of the key tasks along with ‘Hiring network engineers’ and ‘Hiring hardware engineers’ was ‘Hire Richard Branson’. I don’t need to be hired: I’m always happy to help Sergey and Larry.

On April Fool’s Day 2008 we announced the launch of Virgle, a partnership between Virgin and Google looking at creating a community on Mars in the next fifteen years. We were advertising for volunteers to travel on a one- way ticket to Mars. It was concocted over dinner at Necker when we talked seriously about the creation of a human colony on Mars and what it might look like. We then pondered who we would invite. Our announcement made headlines around the world and had dozens of blog sites buzzing with activity. Were we joking? Of course we were joking. Mind you, fifteen years before Apple started selling iPods, I was joking about portable digital music players. With that in mind, we’ve registered the Virgle brand — just in case…

Innovation can occur when the most elementary questions are asked and employees are given the resources and power to achieve the answers. That’s how Virgin America did it. While the legal team fought to convince the Department of Transportation that Virgin America was indeed a US-owned carrier, the Virgin America design and finance teams focused on taking care of business, and that was the business of creating a totally different and better flying experience. What does a great travel experience look and feel like? How would it be different from anything else US travellers have experienced? What would it take to knock their socks off?

Building an entirely new way to fly required a team of specialists who respected each other’s expertise but didn’t hesitate to fight for what they believed was important, who worked in close proximity round the clock, made decisions swiftly, and passionately believed in their vision for the customer. Ironically they themselves were the customers!

While understanding that the airline was to be under US control, Virgin USA CEO Frances Farrow was convinced that the issues the flying public truly cared about — the actual product and experience — should be without equal in US skies. Her first focus was to go after the best talent for customer service and design, and where better to look than people leaving Virgin Atlantic?

As I’ve said before, Virgin employees, after they’ve started a shiny new Virgin company or run a mature one with aplomb, are worth holding on to because they love the brand they helped build and their experience and knowledge of the brand are priceless. New companies are a great way to keep them challenged — and to keep them within the family.

Adam Wells, a whizz-kid from Virgin Atlantic’s design team which had created the award-winning upper-class suites, and Todd Palowski, Virgin Atlantic’s customer service specialist, were brought in as part of the original customer and product insight team. They were quickly followed by talent of the likes of Charles Ogilvie, a cutting- edge interactive entertainment guy.

This small but dedicated group began to dream big. The team didn’t inherit drab legacy planes and they weren’t stuck in the status quo. They were empowered with the Virgin brand to do things differently; there was no other way to create a completely different experience. What if we got rid of check-in lines? What if we turned the airplane into a living room? How can we give control back to passengers? What should we put in our toilets? How can airplane seating express freedom? And how can we express that freedom from the moment passengers reach the ticketing area?

Flying is generally a passive experience. From the moment you enter the airport, you are told what to do. Claim your boarding pass here. Put your luggage there. Stand in line, take your belt off, remove all liquids The onboard experience is no better. If you’re lucky, the cabin crew flips on a heavily edited movie that no one really wants to watch. And that’s followed by a trolley of unhealthy snacks that blocks you from the loo.

What you don’t have is freedom. The Virgin America team believed they could find a way to give it back to you, and they did. (Sorry, they’re geniuses but even they couldn’t make check-in go away.) They designed a liberating experience, one in which you could genuinely do what you wanted with your flying time. You want to work on your laptop? Open it up and go, there’s plenty of room. Running out of power? Plug it in, charge up your computer and play a game while you’re at it. Want to chat with your cousin who is a few rows back? Try seat-to- seat chatting on the inflight entertainment screen using the QWERTY keyboard at your armrest. Feeling peckish? Order a sandwich from your seat, and a flight attendant will deliver it to you when you want it. Want to listen to music? Create a music playlist? Watch a movie ... in Mandarin Chinese? Go for it. It’s all there right in front of you.

You will not get bored on our flights.

So innovation has to be appropriate for your business. It must fulfil a need, and it must give you an edge over your competitors. Our food-ordering system was an extension of our service philosophy, the idea that the cabin crew wanted to give passengers control. No airline in the world but Virgin America offers on-demand food ordering. We decided that free airline food was a failed model. Free is not necessarily good; customers have low expectations and the airline is pressured to slap down the absolute bottom-quality snack. But our team asked some questions and offered a simple solution: if you pay a little bit, you will get what you want. Customers had passively accepted the norm of free peanuts and then nothing at all ...

The Virgin USA brand team did some research on Virgin’s US customers and learned that they tend to be open, ambitious, very social and up for trying new things. It says something about you if you choose to fly with Virgin. You can think of flying as being trapped on a plane with strangers but we think our passengers have more in common with each other than they would with passengers on a legacy carrier. The team liked the idea of giving people a real opportunity for community creation, whether it’s on the entertainment system or chatting with the person next to you or texting someone a few rows away.

We knew broadband was coming but couldn’t time it, and we needed a stopgap to invite people to chat and interact in the cabin. So Charles put chat rooms and seat-to-seat chatting in the inflight entertainment system, with keyboards at every seat. It’s a totally new way of stretching out and interacting while being in a confined space. And through those little seat-back entertainment screens, we created a social community. It didn’t hurt that our small new airline’s tight-knit cabin crew was friendly, remembered repeat passengers and helped to make each flight feel like a party.

While the commercial team was about to order millions of dollars’ worth of planes, the brand team was at the next desk demanding a brighter shade of white from the seat supplier. The supplier had never had this sort of request before; in fact, seat-back colour choices ranged from ten shades of beige to the same of purples and greys ... but no white, and definitely no whiter-than-iPod white.

Lighting on planes tends to be harsh and grim, so Adam designed a mood lighting system with special controls that was custom-developed for us, a first for aeroplanes. Because no whiter-than-iPod white option was available, we gave the seat-backs a unique coating, giving the lighting a sleek surface to reflect off and washing the cabin with soothing light; it was a deliberate visual experience to give the impression of space and freedom.

These simple details are the stuff of Virgin. If that’s what business professors call innovation, fine. Innovation is often what you didn’t know you wanted until you got it. Now the other airlines look outdated and neglected, so