Star Wars may be set in a galaxy far far away, but its creation can teach us a great about the ways in which our world operates - right here on Earth. And accounting? You may think I'm really pulling your leg with this one, but, trust me, I'm not.

I come from a background in Film & Television, English Literature, and Creative Writing and somehow found my way to the wonderful world of accounting software. An unusual journey to say the least - but one which has solidified a belief I've long held: that specific subject knowledge can be learned on the job and skills can be transferred to suit new environments and purposes. If you're prepared to learn, adapt, iterate and reiterate, you can evolve to meet whatever need arises.

Which takes me back to the masterful innovation that is Star Wars.

I recently interviewed Michele Hili, the Finance Solutions Team Lead at Scope Solutions, on the Beyond Insights podcast and he raised something at the end of our episode that stuck with me: accountants have a lot to learn from George Lucas and the making of Star Wars. So, I did what any curious person would do and began watching Light and Magic, the Disney+ docu-series that tells the story of the creation of special effects for Star Wars. This is a phenomenal series which combines behind-the-scenes footage and historic interviews with recent, more reflective interviews, and compiles the stories behind some of the biggest businesses around today and how they got to be where they are - from Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), the first special effects company in the world, to Pixar Studios and Adobe Photoshop.

So, what can you learn from the making of Star Wars and why should you care about this?

You know how there are certain medications that you may be prescribed for one thing - say treating the flu - but which have certain side effects, such as drowsiness? While you really shouldn't use flu meds to treat your insomnia, this is an apt metaphor for the ways you can use other tools smartly - and not always according to their intended purpose. In the first few episodes of Light and Magic, we learn that the motley crew assembled to create visual effects for Star Wars repurposed old technology to create a whole new type of camera, just so that they could get a shot in the very specific way they needed it.

The takeaway for you? There is so much that the tools you use can do for you. If you have a problem, chances are you have a software solution at your disposal that can help you out. It just might mean thinking a bit outside the box, getting creative with how you use the tool, or pushing it to its limits.

For instance, with Syft Analytics, you may have purchased a subscription to create management reports, but there is so much else you can do with the software. By using Build P&L or Ledgers, for instance, you can create totally customizable reports that include whatever you need them to. It's just about trying them out and seeing what's possible.

I know no accountant wants to seem similar their competitors; you always want something that makes you stand out. However, it may be worth your while to check out what other accounting firms are doing, what tech they're using, and what services they're offering just so that you know what possibilities are out there.

Say someone else is charging extra for value-added services such as business partnering. You might not want to offer these services in the exact same way, but they could be a useful source of additional revenue and a great benefit to offer your clients.

All the great minds behind the Star Wars movies were influenced by other films they had seen. Whether this was 2001: A Space Odyssey or the groundbreaking work of Sergei Eisenstein in the 1920s - every person had something they'd seen that they wanted to replicate, emulate, or pay homage to. And it went beyond duplication. They wanted to make it even better. As George Lucas says, 2001: A Space Odyssey contained incredible shots of space and some amazing visual effects, but he wanted to make something more pacy, more like a dog-fight in space. So, he made Star Wars.

The lesson for accountants: How can you use what you see in the industry as inspiration and then add your own flair to it? Take what worked really well for others, leave behind what you don't like, and create something even better.

As the saying goes, no man is an island. We can't get very far on our own. To improve the success of your practice, whether that means growing your client base, getting recognition, increasing your prices, or finding more of a sense of work-life-balance, you need to work with others. And you need to be able to trust the people you work with.

The group that made up ILM, the special effects house that was created specifically for Star Wars, was a strange assortment of people from varied backgrounds. What made the company so special was that each one had something unique to contribute and they worked in harmony with each other with the goal of creating spectacular effects. Lucas placed a great deal of trust in ILM, leaving them alone for six months while he shot Star Wars in another country. While he was gone, it was up to them to find a way to make the magic happen.

If you're running an accounting practice, you want to have employees who can think for themselves, come up with ideas to improve efficiencies or client offerings, and who you know can keep your business going even when you're not around.

In ILM, as computer graphics began to develop, the team became divided. Some people were weary of computer graphics and thought that the use of models was the way to go - forever. Others saw computer graphics as another tool to add to their toolbox, a way to expand their work, rather than a threat to their artistry.

You probably know where this is going.

While stop motion is still used in many films and elements of model building and other old-school forms of special effects exist, computer graphics or CGI, as we now call it, took over, alongside digital editing, digital cameras, and digital pretty much everything.

Those who were open to learning the new skills and adapting how they worked learned a whole new kind of magic. Those who stubbornly stuck to their model-building and puppetry were left behind. Moral of the story? New tech is only a threat if you stay in the dark about it. If you stubbornly resist new tech, then you will be replaced by it. However, if you adapt to the new tech, develop new ways of working with it, rather than against it, there is so much potential for you to tap into.

ILM was developed specifically to address George Lucas's needs for visual effects in Star Wars, but it became so much more than that. It became an incubator for incredible developments in visual effects, giving rise to Pixar Studios, the use of CGI, digital streaming of movies in cinemas, and even Adobe Photoshop. And part of what made it so successful was Lucas's dogged pursuit of better imagery, better effects, better movies. He was ambitious in his pursuit of what he wanted and he saw every new bit of technology as an opportunity.

Today, we may laugh at the effects used in Star Wars, ET, or the original Jurassic Park (all created by ILM), but these effects were revolutionary in their time and led to the creation of truly incredible works of illusion in the film industry - and beyond. Consider your current job and offering as ILM back in the 70s or 80s - onto something good but without a full concept of what your practice will look like in a few years.

Imagine if you take on board the latest tech, from cloud accounting to AI to whatever the next innovation is, dive into the research, experiment with it, and find new ways of working. Instead of fearing AI and the next big thing, consider how you can harness it. You may not be creating galactic battles on the big screen, but the effects of this approach will be even more impactful in the lives of the clients you serve.