The Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce in association with Optus Business were delighted to host nearly 400 guests at the “Smart Disruption in the Digital Age” major business lunch yesterday.

The insightful panel discussion talked about how Australian organisations are facing unprecedented disruption in transformation and how to get the community to embrace change and innovation. The major topics that arose were the real threat of cyber security in Australia, the necessity for collaboration and open access to data, the value of immigrants to startups, and blockchain and identity security.

Maile Carnegie, who moved to ANZ to shift the bank’s thinking towards a group-wide innovation culture, highlighted the importance of understanding your customers in the age of digital disruption and revealed why ANZ conspicuously chose to collaborate with Apple by joining Apple Pay.

Paul O’Sullivan spoke of the importance of collaboration. Referring to an MIT study, The Atlas of Economic Complexity, he said that the companies that grow the fastest are those with the strongest ties with academia. He also offered a key lesson in managing disruption: “follow the money to understand what your customers’ needs are.”

Andrew Walduck spoke of how technology is enabling the rapid rate of change in the world, and how companies must fundamentally change their cultures in order to adapt to this change. A possible solution, he suggested, was keeping team sizes small enough ‘to feed with one pizza’ and giving them autonomy and authority.

Event Video:
https://youtu.be/nOFQEtb-U-4

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