Life on the Edge of Disruption

---

From the dawn of the internet to the global business of sport 

If experience is life’s best teacher and navigator, she’s taken me on a remarkable ride.

I have always loved sport, but until recently I was more of a fan than a participant.  My first and deepest love was, and always will be, music. Playing and singing from a young age in Canada, music meant many things to me over the years, though I had no idea at the time that it was laying the foundation for a lifelong engagement with innovation.

Fast forward to the first major wave of transformational technology, from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, I found myself leading digital transformation initiatives in financial services, one of the first industries to truly embrace digital technology. I worked both inside large “blue-chip” institutions and with what we’d today call fintech disruptors. It was a period of tremendous professional growth, but after a decade it became increasingly clear that the business of money was best left to others.

Just as I was contemplating a next chapter, the phone rang. Long story short, I soon found myself returning home to music as CTO of one of the majors.  Bertelsmann Music Group (“BMG Entertainment”), was part of the quietly iconic German media conglomerate and generating billions in revenue. But even with that and labels like RCA and Arista in its orbit, it was still a punchy outsider compared with entrenched players like Universal, Warner and Sony Music. Being part of that sounded like fun.

Even more compelling, it was the dawn of the internet. It was an uncertain time for many, but an exhilarating one for those of us in the middle of it. Launching some of the first promotional websites and music download platforms at BMG marked the beginning of a digital media career that has now spanned three decades and countless seismic disruptions.

Bouncing between New York and LA I don’t think I could have imagined the adventures that happened along the way; launching a digital media venture alongside the Woodstock partners (yes, that Woodstock), receiving a frontline education in the politics of media from the legendary Jack Valenti as the Motion Picture Association of America’s head of digital strategy during the time of Napster, navigating digital scandals, and playing an integral part in reimagining industries.  It was an endless amount of work, but endlessly compelling and endlessly fun.

By the 2010s I was ready for another adventure. That journey eventually led me to head Accenture’s Asia-Pacific Media & Entertainment consulting practice. I knew the region well from my Bertelsmann and Sony days, and for business and personal reasons I was able to choose Australia as my home base. Those of you who know the place will understand why that’s when sport became more than a spectator’s game for me. 

Australia is sport mad. The passion is palpable, though hard to fully appreciate until you experience it firsthand. One telling comparison: Australia has roughly two-thirds the population of California. California has 19 professional teams; Australia has more than 180. Sport, from participation to some of the biggest events on earth, is part of the national DNA. It’s Australia’s version of motherhood and apple pie.

With its large populations and major media enterprises, developing media clients in North Asia, places like China, Japan and South Korea, was a mission worth pursuing for the ambitions of Accenture.  But the home front, with less than 30 million people across Australia and New Zealand, presented a bigger challenge. We won business, but it was only when we expanded the remit of media and entertainment to include sport, that we really put Australia on the map.  

With their comparatively small organizational size yet large consumer bases we were able to affect impactful digital transformations much more quickly at sporting organizations in contrast to the larger more traditional enterprises that were Accenture’s primary target. Our work in sports like rugby and cricket became global case studies in digital transformation and great ice breakers with the top end of town. And as the only appointment viewing of scale left and the incubator of an ever-growing share of the world’s celebrities, sport has become the darling of the industry and its most digitally innovative member. 

And somehow, though I’m still not entirely sure how, I have once again found myself in the middle of it all. I’ve had the privilege of chairing the Digital Advisory Council for the Australian Sports Commission, developing and selling a platform for event-experience innovation, building lasting relationships across the global sports ecosystem, and about to embark on my fifth year as Content Director for SportNXT, Asia and the Southern Hemisphere’s premier business-of-sport conference to be held this September in Melbourne alongside the NFL’s first regular-season game in Australia.

So, what comes next? That has a few dimensions for me. In the media and technology world I seem to have unknowingly transitioned from “father” to “grandfather”, increasingly spending time mentoring founders and advising C-suites across both media and non-media enterprises. I can honestly say I still enjoy every new challenge and every opportunity for growth, both personal and professional, while helping others focus on the truths, cultures, teams and actions that ultimately deliver their transformational and personal successes.