Skip to content
Who's in the Video
Richard Branson is a British entrepreneur known for his philanthropic projects and his taste for adventure. He is the founder and chairman of Virgin Group Ltd., a conglomerate of separately[…]
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Richard Branson found conventional school work hopeless.

Richard Branson: Well at an early age, I didn’t know I was dyslexic at the time, but I am dyslexic. And therefore, when I went off to school, I found conventional school work hopeless. IQ tests, I would turn them upside down. And whichever way I turned them I couldn’t make sense of them.

I decided at a very young age that I needed to get out of this environment and carve my own way in life. And fortunately, I felt that I was strongly anti-Vietnam War that was taking place at the time.

I was very keen on the idea of students being able to have a voice, students to be able to try and change the, what I thought, archaic way that we were taught to do things. So I left school at 15 to start a magazine to try to change the world and put the world right.

 

Recorded on: July 5, 2007.

Up Next

Related
The integration of artificial intelligence into public health could have revolutionary implications for the global south—if only it can get online.