The movie, Other People’s Money, did a great job illustrating some of the key aspects and point that we discussed in class of how society is affected by entrepreneurship. One of the main points that stood out me was the aspect of creative destruction. This value can be a huge factor to society, and there are several present-day examples of this concept being implemented. In the movie, there are also several examples of how something creative and intuitive can cause havoc or even grief.
After watching the movie, I was able to find two major examples of how creative destruction was implemented in the script. First, the whole underlining point of the movie deals with creative destruction. A man with a lot of money finds himself in a small-town talking business with the owner of a family-owned cable factory. The owner is not open to change and selling off his business-like Mr. Garfield is suggesting to him. The plant is losing money, but the owner still does not want to get rid of it due to his fear of change. Secondly, at the very end of the movie, Mr. Lawrence receives a call from Kate, the daughter of the business owner, talking about a new opportunity for the old factory to start manufacturing airbags. These two illustrations are great examples of how creative destruction can be an aspect of entrepreneurship. The creativity of something or someone can lead to the downfall of someone or something, or even both.
The idea of creative destruction is very interesting. How can something that is so creative, cause such destruction. Let’s use a present-day example to easier explain the idea of creative destruction. The company Amazon is the perfect example of how something creative can leave a large wake economically and socially. As consumers we love the idea of Amazon. We can now buy an item off our mobile devices and have it at our front door in just a few days. This process has driven the need of brick-and-mortar stores down. Just alike, in the movie, the need for large production cable was falling. Therefore, the company was losing money with the production of cable. The only way to save the investors money was to sell off everything that was involved with the company. This includes machinery, shares, land, and materials. This was Mr. Garfield’s reasoning for selling the company.
So how does all this tie into how entrepreneurship relates to society in the movie? The movie used a lot of topics that we have talked about in class, but I felt that the idea of creative destruction stood out the most.. The aspect of creative destruction affects the people in the movie in several different ways. First of all, the owner wanted to keep his business, even though it was failing, in order to keep his town alive. He wanted to continue to offer jobs to those that lived in his town, while Mr. Garfield was only looking out for himself and in return, caused all the employees of the factory to lose their job. The creative outlook that Mr. Garfield had come up with, left a large impact on the employees and the investors. At first, most of the investors did not agree with Mr. Garfield’s outlook on the future of the company, but by the end of his speech, they voted with him, not against him. The people voted for the act of implementing creative destruction in order to obtain more money for themselves. In return, the factory would later open up again, but now making more money than before creating a new product. At first, the overtaking of the business from the creative outlook of Mr. Garfield had created a lot of destruction, but Fortunately, the continues implementation of creative opportunity allowed the factory to open once again.
