You get the idea. Every business, like a painting, operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once. There are no rules. You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it's because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over. It's the greatest thrill in the world and it runs away screaming at the first sight of bullet points.

I never learned the rules in the first place. To change the game is at the heart of what Virgin stands for, so the company culture has always been: "Don't sweat it: rules were meant to be broken."

There's no better satisfaction than watching the people around you, who have worked day and night to get something right, realising the dream.

Happiness is the secret ingredient for successful businesses. If you have a happy company it will be invincible.

People do not mind people who try things and fail. If you're a good entrepreneur, you're not going to succeed in every single thing you try. You've got to try to succeed at more things than fail.

Universities are fantastic places to gain knowledge on a subject, develop a personal network, explore your character and learn new techniques to approach problems.

In Syria, if [Bashar al-] Assad had just been a statesman and handed over the reigns in time, Syria would not be heading down the nightmare that it is today.