SpaceShipTwo – the Virgin Galactic rocket plane capable of taking private citizens to the edge of space.
Sir Richard Branson Leadership – a style of business leadership that is more focused on drawing a line in the sand than robust profiteering.
Branson is an entrepreneur and a pioneer. His leadership is able to fabricate the skeleton onto which others will later attach ligaments, tendons and muscle tissue. This is a hard place to be.
He has spend millions in moving space travel into the realm of the everyday. He has chosen to ignore the self proclaimed prophets who label commercial space travel as dangerous or unprofitable.
The tragedy of 31 October 2014 when SpaceShipTwo exploded after dropping away from the mothership is one of the risks of being a pioneer. The question is this – will it do for space travel what the Hindenburg crash did for the airship? I think not. Sir Richard Branson’s Leadership is equal to the negative fallout resulting from failure.
Branson is no stranger to failure. He knows that it can spawn success with bold leadership – that one learns more from a setback than unconditional success. He will allow the public to embrace the loss and make it their own. He will invite them to walk the path of failure with him before turning their attention back to the future success. His leadership and singular focus will get Virgin Galactic over this challenge and allow them to recover the momentum they have lost.
Virgin Value . . . “To change the game and challenge the status quo by providing a product or service of great use.” – Sir Richard Branson
Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson, left, and Scaled Composites LLC founder Burt Rutan wave from the mothership aircraft White Knight Two “Eve”.