Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ) embarked, in 2018, on an exciting partnership with leading innovation hubs across Australia and New Zealand. The partnerships have helped members adopt new technology, embrace entrepreneurial behaviours, and attract new clients. And those attending hub events, including students, get to see accountants as dynamic business growth catalysts with interesting, purpose-driven career paths.
What are Innovation Hubs?
Innovation hubs are technology co-working ecosystems focused on growing startups and scaleups, typically funded by government agencies as well as corporate partners. Through its hub partnerships, CA ANZ immerses its members in the dynamic startup/scaleup world—so they are at the coal face of business disruption and building connections that foster mutual growth and innovation.
Immersing accountants in business disruption and enablement
The partnerships are multi-faceted, offering chartered accountants (CAs) and startups several ways to engage with each other. The flagship CA in Residence program initiative sees a CA ANZ member selected, onboarded, and complete a 90-day tenure at the hub—during which they run masterclasses and engage in one-on-one meetings with startup companies to assist their needs. They also have their own desk at the hub so they can keep up with their daily work.
So far, over 600 CAs have completed a residency, and typically they’re defined by curiosity for the new and unique. And they are keen to learn—and even more keen to impart their technical and business knowledge.
CAs who have completed the program reflect that they’re able to leverage their expertise in areas critical to startup success, including capital raising, commercialization, pricing, and sometimes even product-market fit. These are all areas that go beyond the typical governance and compliance setup of a business.
“CAs offer much more than profit and loss, balance sheets and the technical side of accounts. We can really help with business advice, financial planning, risk management and checking your solvency—providing some really robust conversations.” –Melissa Grove, CA in Residence, Spacecubed, Perth, Australia
And working with entrepreneurial founders, our members experience real-time insights in how to scale rapidly and frugally, a necessary strategy in current economic times. Moreover, they learn a lot that they can apply to their own work with smaller practices and enterprises.
"Startups have gained trusted financial expertise and market insights, while accountants have stayed ahead of the curve—adopting the same agile, forward-thinking strategies that drive entrepreneurial success." –Majella Campbell, CEO Fishburners
"Micro businesses are the engine room of our economy. If the micro businesses and startups actually kick, we all prosper." –Will Camphin CA in Residence, Fishburners, Sydney
The Digital Advisor
Focusing on startup business models and growth and innovation, the CA in Residence also gains insights into cutting edge technologies and increases their digital acumen. This increased understanding of technology’s disruptive or enabling potential helps them position themselves as digital advisors for their clients—an important skill as every business sector, in some way or another, digitizes or risks being left behind.
A maturing partnership opening up to new audiences
Beyond the flagship CA in Residence program, our innovation hub partnerships continue to mature and evolve. CA ANZ has also hosted fourteen “Dragon’s Den/Shark Tank”-style pitch nights, allowing a wider audience to see where and how technologies are impacting the future of business.
A pitch night focused on agricultural technology (Agritech) attracted 1,300 CAs. While most were accountants with farming clients, other attendees were interested in seeing how entrepreneurial minds seek innovative solutions. Other pitch nights have focused on Medtech, Edutech, Female Founders, Indigenous Entrepreneurs, and—most frequently—Fintech, with AI startups increasingly becoming the norm.
Those pitching must do so in 90 seconds and CAs can vote for the winner while enjoying networking, pizza, and drinks. The judging panel comprises a CA in Residence, a subject matter expert, and a venture capitalist. Excitingly, we’re seeing CAs starting to pitch their own business ideas, helping to shape the profession’s future
“We launched our AI tax bot Abby at a CAANZ Pitch Night. We saw a need to build a tool for ourselves internally, now offered throughout New Zealand and are soon to enter Australia.” –Corinne Smith CA, New Zealand
We are also conducting "reverse pitches" and hackathons, in which CA ANZ aligns its members on a common pain point, runs facilitated ideation workshops to crystallize problem statements, and then waits for the startup ecosystem—a pool of several hundred businesses—to deliver on a solution. Focus groups and workshops on frugal strategies to scale accounting practices are also conducted to help accountants adapt their business models to evolving market demands.
We’ve recently partnered with an Innovation Hub inside the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand to offer the same residency and pitch opportunities. It’s attracting strong accounting student community interest in agile and growth-focused careers.
We’re excited by the ongoing potential of our innovation hub partnerships and their support for our members as digital leaders. It’s a collaboration that supports an innovative, future-proofed, and attractive accounting profession.