[BruvvaPete2]

I stumbled upon a great YouTube video with TH giving an interview to the Milken Institute regarding the future of BlackBerry and mobile computing. This thread is not about debating and controversy. It's about one hour long but it covers quite a lot. It's worth the time to watch.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=g-high-rec&v=dRaXfU_JgP8

[willhugforlove]

This bit at 5:22 is great:

QUESTION
"Thinking of yourself, in ascending to the CEO level, how would you describe what you learned as a leader? How does it prepare you to navigate BlackBerry towards the next phase?"

THORSTEN HEINS
"What I did-- I was extremely decisive in pushing the right actions into action really quickly. So, there was not much time for analytics, and, you know, where do we save the money, or whatever, we just brutally-- dictatorial. I went through the organization, said "You gotta do this, you have to cut this, you have to cut this." There was no debate. Right? Just save it from sinking. And that was a leader-Thorsten-Heins that the people in BlackBerry never have seen before, because I was always kind of, like, the R&D-innovative guy, and then, all of a sudden, I step up and say bam-bam-bam-bam-bam. Got a team on it, and I think that saved us a lot of time. And once you're in these moments, you have to be aware that every day matters. So you really have to have a high sense of alert[ness]. And there is no room for debates, there is no room for consensus: you're the leader, and you have to say what has to happen, and you have to take the risk, you have to assume the responsibility, you have to assume the accountability, but this is what your job as the CEO is in those situations.

"And then we kind of turned this, you know, found the cost reductions that we needed, reduced the workforce under strong help from Canadian government--that was really helpful--also under very strong help from our community. So, the community in Waterloo is a tech-cluster, innovative community, so there was good absorption rate from people that we had to let go. And it worked out well.

"But I don't want people here to think I'm a dictator, okay. (laughs) This is not my leadership style. This is the situation at the moment. You have to adapt your leadership style to the moment, and to the challenge that you find."

[willhugforlove]

Oh, and this bit at 14:23:

QUESTION
Talk to me more about the migration from mobile communicating to mobile computing. Like, what is it that you think we're all going to be doing subsequently with this new platform?

THORSTEN HEINS
"I'll give you a very new time example: I gave my laptop back to my IT department. I had to sit on my own desk for a while, I have this RSA dongle, and I never used it because I was actually really good enough with a BlackBerry and with a Playbook Tablet-- for my work, that I have to do, good enough. I'm not the Excel spreadsheet guru, I'm not the PowerPoint artist-- they will always have dedicated workstations to do that.

"IDC said that in the year 2015, there will be 1.4 billion mobile workers out there. This is 40% of our workforce. So, what do you wanna do, carry a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop? Do you wanna VPN it to your system all the time? When Mike [Lazaridis] and I decided to build BlackBerry 10, the vision was (raises his BlackBerry Q10) this is your computing power. I mean, think about that statement. This is your one and only computing power that you will carry with you. And when you go to a hotelling station in your corporation, it's on your hip, it authenticates you, because it's so secure, it allows you access to the building, allows you access to your workplace, allows you access to a larger screen, a keypad and the work environment. But all data is resident on that device, and all data is resident on the corporate premises-- nothing left on the peripherals around you. And wherever you go, this is what you have. And I'm using it. I have thrown out all polycomms out of my office, I have no conference phone anymore--I run it all from Z10. And that is what I believe will create a huge productivity in enterprises again. It will make life of CIO's simpler, but it will make life of the individuals simpler.

"So this is where we are headed: 40 - 50% of all mobile workers will use this one, single device as their mobile computing power. There is no more laptop. I doubt whether there's a laptop in a few years from now--er (correcting himself) whether there's a tablet in a few years from now, because you can just connect it to a big screen and off you go. And that's the vision of mobile computing."