Founded in 1984; headquartered in Canada; launched the BlackBerry smartphone in 1999; led by Co-CEO Jim Balsillie and President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis… These are among the ‘Fast Facts’ you would find in >www.rim.com , the site of Research In Motion Ltd.
Looking back at nearly quarter century, the founders acknowledge that theirs has been an entrepreneurial tale of initiative, skill, innovation, hard work, risk and reward. Growing from a student start-up, RIM is now an international corporation with over 12,000 employees, selling about 37 million devices, and clocking about $15 billion in revenues in 2010 fiscal.
“As can be expected on such a corporate journey, there are lots of twists and turns with both smooth and bumpy patches along the way,” reminisce the founders in the foreword to ‘BlackBerry: The inside story of Research in Motion’ by Rod McQueen ( >www.hachetteindia.com ).
The home of RIM is Waterloo, Ontario, a university city of about a lakh, an hour west of Toronto, first settled in the nineteenth century by Mennonites who came for the fertile land and can still be seen driving their horse-drawn buggies on rural roads, the author describes. Over the years, manufacturing firms in the region, like those in most other increasingly urban areas in North America, have gone through boom-bust cycles, he adds.
“Button makers and leather tanneries gave way to tires and televisions, only to see low-wage countries take these jobs, too. High tech is the new saviour. The twin cities of Kitchener-Waterloo are part of what’s called the Technology Triangle, which includes the nearby cities of Cambridge and Guelph…”
Global brand
By far the biggest of the fourteen publicly traded local high-tech firms is RIM, representing more than 90 per cent by value, informs McQueen. He notes that in the entire history of the country only a handful of Canadian manufacturing firms have achieved anything approaching sustained success as a global brand.
Examples mentioned include Massey-Ferguson in the nineteenth century and Bata, Bombardier, Magna, and Nortel Networks in the twentieth century. “BlackBerry is the first Canadian brand of the new millennium to have the same kind of commanding international presence as those giants of yesteryear.”
And Lazaridis continues to remain deeply passionate about what he is doing, like a little-boy gadget freak, one learns from quotes in the book. For instance, “Whenever I see him at a trade show, he takes me aside, pulls out the latest toy, and he oohs and he aahs all over it,” remembers Andy Seybold, a wireless consultant. “Mike is not driven by money. He is driven by ‘What can I do next to take this platform and turn it into something super cool yet again?’ And he keeps doing it.”
Wild ride of surfers
Unlike Lazaridis who left university to start the company, Balsillie is a chartered accountant with a Harvard MBA. Yet, the latter sees the duo’s work in the competitive world as one of the wild ride of surfers. It’s like a beach which has got three or four series of waves, he visualises.
You have the rolling waves here, but then you sort of have a semi, loosely coupled set of rolling waves over here, and you have a set here, and they’re all one body of interrelationships, and wave by wave by wave, you have to understand that they’re separate but not, continues Balsillie. “You’re surfing these waves but you are not in control, you are definitely not in control. You just aim and hold on and tweak where you can.”
Innovation, operational excellence, and customer satisfaction are the fundamentals, according to Lazaridis. And, as for the future wave, he is positive that smartphones can replace many of the functions now carried out by the laptop computer. There is a chance that these handheld, wirelessly connected, always interacting with the entire information pool through the Internet, will replace your laptop, reads a prediction in the book that is already turning out to be increasingly true.
However, to Lazaridis, people are important. Too many entrepreneurs focus on traditional sectors rather than knowledge-based ideas, he rues. “It’s too easy to rely on your natural resources and not realise that people are natural resources, they’re renewable and they are infinitely powerful.”
Execution concentration
RIM shipped its 75 millionth BlackBerry in 2009. The secret formula of the business, in Balsillie’s view, is 5 per cent strategy and 95 per cent execution. Most competitors cannot maintain a similar concentration, he feels.
You never modulate, you just don’t stop, you never give advantages, and you count on the other person blinking, instructs an insightful quote of his. “They’ll have a reorg, or they’ll quit, or they’ll be overaggressive, or they’ll do something erratic. Methodical predictability with a high function, high trust, high execution-centric organisation is an unbelievably effective strategy.”
Do your best, live for the day, go to bed, and do it again tomorrow, reads another of Balsillie’s counsels in the book. “Don’t live with regrets, don’t over-scenarioise and don’t worry about the future. That’s all there is. The rest of it is just a grand illusion.”
A book you may want to read, nestled with a helpfully silent BlackBerry.
***
