A: We did not have a tra­di­tion­al mas­ter plan with sec­tors and new ter­ri­to­ries marked for ex­pan­sion neat­ly mapped out. In fact, we still do not have that sort of plan or or­gan­i­sa­tion, since we be­lieve that our en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it and flex­i­bil­i­ty are vi­tal to Vir­gin's suc­cess. This ap­proach has had a pro­found im­pact on the way we de­vel­op our new busi­ness­es.

At a ca­su­al glance, one would think that we have been rather op­por­tunis­tic in our choic­es over the years about the busi­ness­es and sec­tors in­to which we ex­pand­ed. Ini­tial­ly, we moved in­to ar­eas where I had a per­son­al in­ter­est (such as mu­sic and me­dia); then, as we be­gan to un­der­stand more about Vir­gin's strengths in terms of cus­tomer ser­vice, where we felt in­dus­tries were ready for shak­ing up (air­lines, health clubs, mo­bile phones); and more re­cent­ly, where my pas­sion for ex­plo­ration has tak­en us (space and deep ocean tourism).Our choic­es were not ran­dom or mere­ly re­ac­tive, but guid­ed by our de­ci­sion to take an en­tre­pre­neur­ial ap­proach to ex­pan­sion.

Pick­ing Vir­gin's next ven­ture

In­stead of push­ing our teams to do ever more in­ten­sive analy­sis to pick our next ven­ture-which can slow the whole busi­ness down-I set a pri­or­i­ty on our re­main­ing open to new ideas. It is one of the rea­sons that I al­ways urge peo­ple to pur­sue their own in­ter­ests out­side work and to take reg­u­lar va­ca­tions.

Ex­er­cis­ing your cre­ativ­i­ty in oth­er set­tings isn't just re­lax­ing; you'll stay in­formed about de­vel­op­ments in oth­er fields and con­nect with a wider cir­cle of peo­ple than you might en­counter at work. Keep­ing your think­ing fresh and orig­i­nal makes good busi­ness sense!I had al­ways loved mu­sic, for in­stance. In 1972, when Mike Old­field pitched us his al­bum, Tubu­lar Bells, af­ter many record com­pa­nies had turned him down, I recog­nised its val­ue, as did my friends, and we de­cid­ed to start up a com­pa­ny to help him find an au­di­ence.The al­bum did so well that it helped es­tab­lish Vir­gin Records and fund­ed the launch of the com­pa­ny, which be­came the biggest in­de­pen­dent record la­bel in the world by the 1990s.

Cap­i­talise on op­por­tu­ni­ties

This brings me to my next point: you al­ways have to be ready to cap­i­talise on op­por­tu­ni­ties when they come along, and not be afraid to pounce. In the late 1990s, es­tab­lished com­pa­nies of­fer­ing mo­bile phone ser­vices in Britain were find­ing it tough to at­tract the lu­cra­tive cor­po­rate mar­ket and the grow­ing youth one.We took ad­van­tage of the open­ing by launch­ing Vir­gin Mo­bile, which, us­ing T-Mo­bile's phys­i­cal plant and net­work, pro­vid­ed great ser­vice at a cheap­er price and didn't re­quire cus­tomers to sign a con­tract. We saw this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a ser­vice ori­en­tat­ed to­ward youth; as you could see from our cheeky mar­ket­ing cam­paign.

From this we learned the ad­van­tages of the vir­tu­al net­work mod­el, where we part­nered with an ex­ist­ing op­er­a­tor. Soon we rolled out sim­i­lar busi­ness­es in the Unit­ed States, Aus­tralia, Cana­da and France.We have since ex­pand­ed in­to In­dia and are about to launch mo­bile phone ser­vice busi­ness­es in Latin Amer­i­ca, with each new com­pa­ny build­ing on our brand val­ues of pro­vid­ing great val­ue for mon­ey, a touch of fun and glam­our and, above all, great ser­vice.

Fear­less about risk

You must be fear­less when ven­tur­ing in­to new ar­eas, once you have es­tab­lished what the risks are.Our launch of our space-tourism busi­ness Vir­gin Galac­tic and our re­cent ex­plo­rations of the ocean depths are great ex­am­ples of this. We did not set our­selves these chal­lenges on a whim, but af­ter years of work­ing and ex­chang­ing ideas with ex­perts in those fields.We are build­ing on our tech­ni­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in air trav­el and al­so our his­to­ry of tak­ing on dif­fi­cult feats, such as our record-break­ing bal­loon trips across the Pa­cif­ic and At­lantic, which re­quired our ac­quir­ing tech­ni­cal knowl­edge in many dif­fer­ent ar­eas.

You must heed the lessons of the past, but al­so be pre­pared to learn as you go.And, fi­nal­ly, you need to seek out new op­por­tu­ni­ties, as well as re­act to those you en­counter.At present, pop­u­la­tion growth and de­vel­op­ment are linked to in­creased con­sump­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources and ris­ing en­er­gy needs. En­tre­pre­neurs who take time to in­form them­selves about the is­sues will spot op­por­tu­ni­ties to build new, sus­tain­able busi­ness­es for present and fu­ture mar­kets.

We have set up the Vir­gin Green Fund to lead our ef­fort and in­vest in the re­new­able sec­tor.This is like­ly to be one of the biggest ar­eas of in­vest­ment in the next 40 years; I hope that in the fu­ture Vir­gin is as well known for its ac­tiv­i­ties in these ar­eas as it is for mu­sic and avi­a­tion to­day.There is no pre­scrip­tion for how best to build and ex­pand your busi­ness or in­vest cap­i­tal. Your choic­es should de­pend on your in­ter­ests and goals, how a new com­pa­ny would fit with yours, on your tol­er­ance for risk and al­so on luck; al­though you can make your luck!

Richard Bran­son is the founder of the Vir­gin Group and com­pa­nies such as Vir­gin At­lantic, Vir­gin Amer­i­ca, Vir­gin Mo­bile and Vir­gin Ac­tive.He main­tains a blog at www.vir­gin.com /richard-bran­son/blog. You can fol­low him on Twit­ter at twit­ter.com/richard­bran­son. Ques­tions from read­ers will be an­swered in fu­ture columns.Richard­Bran­son@ny­times.com. Please in­clude your name, coun­try, e-mail ad­dress and the name of the Web site or pub­li­ca­tion where you read the col­umn.