It’s Consumer-Driven Tech All The Way For Branson, If He Was Just Starting Up Today, by Alison Coleman.

Here’s the extract of the article that can found in full here:

……Fiona Jarvis first realised she might have MS over 20 years ago when she kept falling off her high-heels. Today she uses a wheel chair to glide through life, and is the entrepreneur behind Blue Badge Style, a guide that rates places by style, accessibility and facilities for people with disabilities, which she launched in her 50s.

She says: “I’d previously had a career in IT sales and always knew the best places to take clients. As my MS developed, I needed to know I could get into a venue easily and not leave my guest at the bar, while I struggled to get into an unfamiliar building. This meant doing a lot of online research and having conversations with the front of house staff before I arrived.”

Jarvis realised she wasn’t the only one in that situation, and also that she had a lot of information about which venues in London were good for people with disabilities. She decided to put it online, first as a website and then in 2012 as an app.

She said: “Having had a career in IT, I wasn’t learning about business for the first time, and while the tech sector has a reputation for being youth-focused, in reality it’s accessible for anyone. I did a web app development course in early 2012, which was the impetus for growth, and Blue Badge Style attracted two investors, reinforcing my own belief that I had a good business idea.”

Digital or not, some aspects of business never change, and Richard Branson insists that any new tech start-up of his would embrace the same principles that have made his Virgin brand so successful.

He says: “While I can’t give a definitive answer about exactly what business I would produce, it would need to follow a few rules. It needs to be simple; if I understand a product or service on first glance, then customers will too, and it needs to be disruptive, make a real difference in people’s lives, and be purposeful. Business should be a force for good, because in a modern world there can be no profit without a well-defined purpose.”

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