Sorry if you're coming to this post looking for easy ways to make cash from other people. This post is actually about the 1991 film, Other People's Money. For a little background information, the movie stars Danny DeVito, Lawrence Garfield. Garfield is a wall street tycoon who buys up enough shares of failing companies to sell their assets for profits. His raider behavior is why people recognize him as Larry the Liquidator, scary. (Also, this movie has one of the funniest comedy romance relationships in all of movie history.)
Even though everyone loves a good comedy-drama, this movie promotes many serious aspects of business and entrepreneurship. Which is why I'm here, to highlight these points and show you how they relate to society.
In the Entrepreneur world, there is something called creative destruction. An easy definition for this is something new bringing an end to what existed before. Though it sounds scary, I promise you it's actually a good thing. We as a society benefit from creative destruction. It happens all the time today. A few examples of this are Netflix, Spotify, Uber, and Amazon. These three companies are essential to many people's everyday life. However, they've cause a lot of pain to other companies. Netflix took out Blockbuster, Spotify removed the need for traditional CD's, Uber took away the need for taxi's, and Amazon has wreaked havoc on American shopping malls. Creative destruction is caused by innovation that helps people save time and money, or at least it's supposed to.
In the movie, Lawrence Garfield is a trailblazer. He made millions of dollars perfecting a new method for earning Wall Street money. Over time, Garfield buys up enough stock in a company to where he can file a Schedule 13D. A Schedule 13D is a document that allows shareholders to liquidate a company to make a return on their investment. In Garfields case, he bought enough stock to make lots of money from this maneuver on a company called New England Wire and Cable. If you're left wondering why they're named that, that produced wire and cable in New England Though this method sounds absurd, it has happened many times in real life. It's often times referred to as a hostile takeover. But even then, it is considered creative destruction. Forget the fact that someone will lose a family business and jobs will be lost, this action allows many people to save their time and money. I'm joking, partially. You see, like I said, all forms of creative destruction have some drawback. Just think of how many taxi drivers lost their jobs due to Uber.
The main reason for using this story as an example of creative is to point out my favorite entrepreneurial theme in the movie, adaptation. Being able to adapt to your circumstances is one of the most important skills you can have as an entrepreneur. In the movie there is a lawyer, Kate Sullivan, assigned the task of defending the company. She is a big city lawyer who is actually the daughter in-law of the companies owner. Even though Sullivan is very skilled, fear and greed consumed the shareholders causing her to lose. In a vote, Larry the Liquidator was able to convince a majority of the other shareholders into siding with him. It's important to note how Sullivan somewhat knew this would be the end result. All the while, she continued to persevere and try new tactics. Still though, when it was all said and done, the decision was made to liquidate. Kate didn't take this as a the end. She was dealt this situation. So what did she do? Miss Sullivan, with her ambition and sexy seductiveness, had to adapt. Sullivan was able to form a deal with a Japanese company that wanted to buy the company and use it to manufacture the next big ting, car airbags. They were willing to pay Garfield a generous amount of money for his shares, keep the owners involved in the company, and save the jobs for the workers. This way, everyone was able to get, or keep, what they wanted.
What does this show us? In nature, adaptation helps organisms survive in their environment. As an entrepreneur, adaptation helps us succeed in a changing world. Nothing is forever in business, hence creative destruction. Therefore, you must be able to embrace change and adapt in order to flourish.
