Posts

Disruption at work - the movie Freedom - two Australian SME's shaking up the movie industry

Continuing on the theme of the last post on business disruption brings me to the movie Freedom starring Cuba Gooding, Jr and William Sadler and far more importantly produced by an Australian SME and directed by Australia's Peter Cousens, who I have known for over 10 years. The film is fantastic — an inspiring , though at times confronting tale — about doing things differently, often at a personal or business cost, with passion and a conscience. Set in the US in 1856, the film tells the story of ordinary people, members of a secret organisation called the Underground Railroad, that help a family of slaves escape to freedom. The story behind the film is even better — a small Aussie SME taking on the massive Hollywood studios, launching the premiere in Australia, and presenting the film to small networking groups and associations ( like the SME Association who were briefed by director Peter Cousens last night at our July monthly networking event in Sydney) and challenging the sta

Business Disruption

Having just read the cover story in this months My Business magazine which is focused on disruption, it seems to me that disruption can be one of two extremes either a massive challenge - see video store or bookkeeping or a massive opportunity. The challenge comes from complacency and not spending enough time working on the business, not seeing the new trend coming and not being aware of new technology. I have just finished a national roadshow - 6 conferences in 10 days on Self Managed Super Fund Strategies with Grant Abbott - most of the audience were accountants or financial advisers and we spent some time looking at disruptive business models. Accounting services have been severely disrupted over the last 20 years - first with the introduction of the GST which saw the old fashioned cashbook dead and buried and the introduction of bookkeeping software - MYOB, Reckon etc - but all were local programs running on our PC and you couldn't access remotely and they generally didn&#