3 ms·

Its kind of depressing which companies seem to grow into enormous enterprises in Australia. Mining companies and supermarkets. Pillaging natural resources, shaf

Its kind of depressing which companies seem to grow into enormous enterprises in Australia. Mining companies and supermarkets. Pillaging natural resources, shafting farmers and consumers. Those seem to be our most successful business models. Depressing indeed.

bmunro 17y ago
And banks. A lot of the biggest companies in Australia are banks.
- Scott_Culture 17y ago
  They are more like the retailers... huge local players, but pretty shy about international expansion.
Scott_Culture 17y ago
We need to be careful about equating company size with company 'nastiness'. The mining firms are (partly) of a huge scale because that is what is needed to succeed globally, and they have achieved the scale through very considerable international expansion (including substantial mergers - think Rio Tinto, and BHP Billiton). As the post argues, the two big Australian retailers haven't been anywhere near as 'brave' internationally.
- andyjdavis 17y ago
  My somewhat poorly made point was that there don't seem to be many Australian companies that grow into large organizations purely by innovation. Electronics, Internet services, aerospace research/manufacturing, software. That kind of thing. We seem to do well at taking tried and true business models (dig up iron ore and sell it, buy cheap fruit and veg and sell it at a big mark up) but we have a poor track record for establishing creative companies. Creative in that they create something. products/services that didn't exist before. Its kind of weird that there seem to be so few Australian tech companies that are international big players. In terms of other large Australian companies there's also New Corp but Im not sure that dead tree publishing qualifies as an innovation based business. Plus I think they moved to the US a few years back.

3 ms·

Its kind of depressing which companies seem to grow into enormous enterprises in Australia. Mining companies and supermarkets. Pillaging natural resources, shaf

by andyjdavis 17y ago

bmunro 17y ago
And banks. A lot of the biggest companies in Australia are banks.
- Scott_Culture 17y ago
  They are more like the retailers... huge local players, but pretty shy about international expansion.
Scott_Culture 17y ago
We need to be careful about equating company size with company 'nastiness'. The mining firms are (partly) of a huge scale because that is what is needed to succeed globally, and they have achieved the scale through very considerable international expansion (including substantial mergers - think Rio Tinto, and BHP Billiton). As the post argues, the two big Australian retailers haven't been anywhere near as 'brave' internationally.
- andyjdavis 17y ago
  My somewhat poorly made point was that there don't seem to be many Australian companies that grow into large organizations purely by innovation. Electronics, Internet services, aerospace research/manufacturing, software. That kind of thing. We seem to do well at taking tried and true business models (dig up iron ore and sell it, buy cheap fruit and veg and sell it at a big mark up) but we have a poor track record for establishing creative companies. Creative in that they create something. products/services that didn't exist before. Its kind of weird that there seem to be so few Australian tech companies that are international big players. In terms of other large Australian companies there's also New Corp but Im not sure that dead tree publishing qualifies as an innovation based business. Plus I think they moved to the US a few years back.