Richard Branson talks about Global Entrepreneurship Week and why he thin...

Richard Branson is Chairman of the Virgin Group.  He was born in 1950 and educated at Stowe School, where he set up Student magazine when he was sixteen years old.  In 1970 he founded Virgin asa mail order record retailer, and shortly afterwards opened a record shop on London's Oxfort Street.  Two years later, the company built a recording studio Virgin Records went on to become the largest independent record company in the world.

Since then theVirgin Group has expanded to encompass around three hundred companies in over thirty countries.  Richard is the only person in the world to have built eight billion-dollar companies from scratch in eight different sectors.  Through the Virgin Group's charitable arm, Unite, he is working to develop new approaches to social and environmental problems.

Richard's autobiography, Losing My Virginity, and his books on business, Screw it,  Let's Do it and Business Stripped Bare, are all international bestsellers.  He lives on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands and is married with two grown-up children. (extract from his book Losing My Virginity - Cover Page)