Richard Branson: Education isn't always useful

Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson says formal education isn’t always important for those interested in entrepreneurism.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Branson says schools are there to educate the masses, but entrepreneurs rebel against that.

Branson, who left school at the age of 15, says he learnt the art of entrepreneurism by just ‘getting out there and doing it’.

 “I’ve seen my life as one long education that I never had,” Branson told Bloomberg.

 “If you have a good idea, that you feel can make a difference to people’s lives, I suspect you will be better off not building up a big debt of student debt. The danger is if you fail you don’t have an education to fall back on.

 But Branson says that while a lack of formal education didn’t hold him back, that’s not to say it isn’t sometimes important.

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 “Obviously for other professions, school sand universities can be quite useful.”

But when Branson is looking to hire a new employee he says how well they performed in school is not such an important criterion.

“Personally I don’t look at how many A levels they had or what their academic career was. I look more at what experiences they’ve had in life, what kind of person they are,” Branson said.

“Having said that, if they are going to build our rockets, we’d like a rocket scientist.”

Branson says as a child he was hopeless in school, only to discover as an adult that he was in fact dyslexic.

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He says his dyslexia helped Virgin become the successful brand it has become.

“I’m dyslexic and therefore I’ve been very good at keeping things simple,” Branson said. “At Virgin, I think, we do not use jargon, it’s very clear cut, very simple.”

“I think people have an affinity to the Virgin brand because we don’t talk above them or talk down to them.”

Branson says having a learning disability taught him to become a good delegator because he realised how important it was to find great people who could step in and deal with his weaknesses.

In fact he says it is a lesson all business leaders could learn.

“Too many leaders try to cling on and do everything themselves and never let go and therefore they never grow a group of companies like Virgin.”

 Watch the full interview below: