Each month, “Ammirati on Innovation” episodes will look at ways that the disruptive-startup mentality is spreading beyond young entrepreneurs to big established corporations. Serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and Carnegie Mellon B-school professor Sean Ammirati, who sits at the intersection of these high-change dynamics, provides insight.
Episode 8
In this episode, Sean and I discuss the blockbuster that is Disney+. The app had more than 10 million sign-ups in 24 hours—and app experts report that Disney is registering about 1.2 million downloads a day. Sean’s wife was one of the 10 million! Because, as a father of two kids, Sean says you need food, water, and Mickey Mouse. Wrapping up the topic of the entertainment juggernaut, I share a quick story about Larry Ellison, Disney, and Yahoo.
Speaking of breakout products, Sean and I next talk about SAP. Sean says SAP is reimagining HR, and leading the transition from HCM to HXM—in other words, employees first. SAP is creating a whole new category, and in Sean’s opinion, that’s not going to be the last big innovation we’re going to see coming from SAP. With the HCM space heating up, we also reflect on the Salesforce and Microsoft bidding war for LinkedIn. What felt at the time like a huge price for Microsoft to pay for the social platform now feels awfully cheap.
Later, Sean circles back to Disney+. He wonders how the CEO of Netflix will figure out what to do to level the playing field. Sean knows the history of AOL and TimeWarner. He says the world has changed, and you need to scale to have a shot in the game that Netflix and Disney+ are playing today.
You can also stream the audio-only version of this episode:
Highlights
'I really think that this Disney+ announcement is going to end up being the textbook example of large companies… completely taking advantage of their assets to go compete with these digitally native tech companies.' #CloudWars Click To Tweet 'Every executive in America today needs to be asking themselves, What's our unfair competitive advantage and how are we going to do our own Disney+ move?' #CloudWars Click To Tweet ''If you fast forward like a decade from now, it's hard to imagine that software hasn't completely transformed how we identify, retain talent, make talent efficient, and scale up organizations.' #CloudWars Click To Tweet
Cloud Wars Live Digital All-Stars
Sean Ammirati is one of our regular Digital All-Stars. These experts appear in regular video podcasts. The conversations focus on the critical themes shaping (and re-shaping!) the business world in the digital age of 2019. Our intention is to provide regular chunks of timely ideas and insights about high-priority subjects from industry veterans with diverse backgrounds.
