Roger Flynn

Roger Flynn's Biography

Roger Flynn is a business development specialist who includes investor, director, former BBC Ventures Chief Executive and Virgin Commercial Director on his CV.

Roger is passionate about transforming organisations, markets and business models and the Leadership required to deliver the Vision. He has driven transformational change in highly recognised global businesses and invests in media and travel businesses that have the potential to disrupt their markets. Current speech topics include Transformational Change, Disruption and Leadership.

Roger is a Chairman and investor in media, travel and technology businesses; he is Chairman of Luxtripper, a luxury travel agency, D R Communications Ltd, a company offering cloud hosted telephony and mobile solutions, Chairman of Clearvac Group, an international Cruise Ship and Superyacht maintenance services business and Non-Executive Director of Cooke Optics, a camera lens manufacturer for the Film & TV industry.

He was for 7 years until May 2018 Chairman of and an investor in loveholidays.com, the UK’s fastest growing online travel agency which disrupted the UK travel industry over six years from launch in January 2012 to £500m in revenues. It is now the fourth largest travel agency in the UK, 1st in the Sunday Times Profit Track in 2019 and 2nd in the Fast Track 100 listing of fastest growing UK businesses. The business was successfully sold in May 2018 for £180m.

Roger is a recognised CEO and leader in transformation change having driven change in global organisations including Virgin, British Airways, Prudential, the BBC and SDI Media.

Roger started his career at Virgin working directly for Sir Richard Branson on deals and new business ideas. He then became Commercial Director of Virgin Communications, the media arm of Virgin Group, working on the launch of Virgin Radio, the development of its’ global post-production business and the rapid growth and sale of Virgin Interactive Entertainment.

Roger was General Manager World Sales & Distribution at British Airways where he transformed the £1.2 billion distribution system for BA and subsequently the industry, launched electronic ticketing and created ba.com with a simultaneous launch in 72 countries across the world.

Roger was Managing Director of Prudential Retail, the retail distribution arm of Prudential Plc, with £2 billion in revenue and 6 million customers. Joining immediately after the pension’s mis-selling scandal, he drove a major business transformation including the launch of new products, new distribution channels, a £200m CRM programme and an innovative new sales process. As part of this transformation he led an exhilarating and exhausting culture change for the 6,500 staff.

Roger was Chief Executive of BBC Ventures Group, the commercial B2B arm of the BBC with 4,500 staff providing media services to the BBC and broadcast/IT customers around the world. Roger’s transformation and subsequent sale of these businesses created over £1 billion of value for the BBC. Roger was also on the Main Board of the BBC and an integral part of the BBC-wide transformational change programme.

Speaking Topics Include

The Virgin way

The inside story of what makes Virgin tick. What is it about the way Virgin does business that has made it so successful over the last 25 years? Working directly for Richard Branson for 7 years, he launched and accelerated a number of businesses. He also advised the Board of Virgin Media. He is uniquely placed to talk on the business methodologies adopted by Virgin, how it competes and how its values have developed to create one of the leading brands in the world.

The blue door to innovation

British Airways led the world in distribution innovation in the mid 1990’s, tackling the outdated airline system and bringing innovations that created the electronic experience everyone’s familiar with today. Roger led this transformation with a strategy to reduce cost of sales from 20% to 6%. Painting his office door bright blue when he joined signalled that changes were coming – changes which led to incredible innovation, momentum and results.

Creating deep loyalty and sense of purpose

What was it that had thousands of staff in tears when Greg Dyke was fired? Why did they pay for national newspaper ads calling for his reinstatement? What did he do to create such belief in the vision for the BBC and the leadership team? Roger was Chief Executive of BBC Ventures Group and a member of the BBC’s Executive Team during this period of transformation. His insights provide valuable lessons for any organisation undertaking a period of significant change.

Transforming business models

The Prudential Retail business model needed to be transformed into a multi-channel proposition with a broader product offering. When 7,000 staff are wedded to the old model, how do you get behind the new approach? Roger, as Managing Director, led the transformation of this business post pensions miss-selling and in the lead up to stakeholder pensions’ reform that dramatically altered the market place. Roger’s insights bring real and practical solutions to the current challenges.