Branson encourages resilience for Alberta’s oilpatch

At a time when Alberta’s energy industry is facing significant challenges, British billionaire Richard Branson says innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and a social conscience will be keys to moving forward.

The 67-year-old business magnate and Virgin Group founder spoke Tuesday at Calgary ’s Energy Disruptors Unite conference, telling the crowd at a packed Big Four building at Stampede Park that in business, “you either curl up and give up or you fight to survive.”

“To me, business is a child, a baby. You’ve got people working there and in the same way you don’t throw your child out when things aren’t going well, you don’t really want to stop a business,” Branson said. “In business, often when you start a business from scratch, it’s going to be times when you’re facing failure and you just got to fight tooth and nail to avoid it.”

Branson reflected on how much had changed since he left school as a teenager to run his own magazine about half a century ago, and the challenges that modern entrepreneurs now face.

“You can quite often make dreams a reality if you just talk ahead of yourself a little bit,” he said. “When I started 50 years ago, the word ‘entrepreneur’ hardly existed. The world was run by big companies. There wasn’t the internet and the quality of service people got was dire. Fortunately, over the last 50 years, more and more entrepreneurs are coming up with great ideas. They’re coming up with ideas to disrupt established business, they ’re coming up with brand new ideas altogether.”

Earlier in the day, Branson touted Calgary’s up-and-coming entrepreneurs, whom he said could help lift the city out of its economic downturn.

“You haven’t done too badly, actually, when I look at the figures for Calgary,” Branson said during an appearance at Chinook Centre, where he helped announce the winner of Virgin Mobile Canada’s Pitch to Rich Contest.

The competition invited Canadians to pitch a mobile-related business idea for a chance to win $10,000.

Branson said one of the most important things he looks for when young business-minded people pitch him ideas is whether the concept has the potential to make a positive difference in people’s lives.

One such idea, a new type of fuel that would be 50 per cent waterbased, was mentioned to him earlier in the day during a lunch meeting in Calgary, Branson said.

“It’s going to be breakthroughs like that that could end up saving the world from catastrophe, from climate change, almost more than anything else,” Branson said.

On the subject of climate change, Branson said he could relate to Alberta’s energy decision-makers who are grappling with how to do what’s best for the industry without hurting the environment.

“I’ve got airlines, I’m facing exactly the same problem that they ’re facing. We started these businesses before any of us knew about the effects of climate change,” Branson said.

“What we all have to do is do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint, accepting that we’re going to need natural gas, we’re going to need oil for the time being. But I think the more we can spend our profits in helping … the better. It’s getting a balance.”