Short clip: Creating a culture of innovation

October 10, 2006, 8:20am PDT | Length: 00:00:49
Robert Fort talks to ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Dan Farber about how his company encourages its employees to take chances with new product lines.

Transcript

Short clip: Creating a culture of innovation

Host: Are there knew businesses that have been started or new products that have germinated out of your group?

Guest: Well, Virgin has traditionally been -- we are one of the worlds premier entertainment specialty retailers and so we've been CDs and DVDs for years. But now we've started to stretch our product lines and we're now into consumer electronics and fashion. And if you look at our fashion area, for example, the folks that have been brought in there have been given a lot of autonomy. I mean there are some basic guidelines given but then they're out there going and given the freedom to go off and try things and some don't work and sometimes we retreat out of that but then we keep pushing forward. So that's an example I mean just the culture itself is set up that there's no constraints really. Obviously, we're a commercial business. We have to produce revenue from this and you know obviously that revenue has to be higher than our cost. But still we try things and that's important.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====

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