An Accurate discription of Jim & Mike. By G&M

[Dapper37]

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle2318013/

RIMs CEOs never took the easy way out.

The resignation of Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis as co-CEOs of Research in Motion marks the end of an era not only for the BlackBerry maker, but for Canadian business. Their raw determination and unapologetic ambition, so uncommon among Canadian business leaders, transformed a small consulting company into a $20-billion global behemoth with an iconic brand sought after by presidents and movie stars.

Mr. Lazaridis and Mr. Balsillie are inspirational figures for their technological innovation, and the fact that they built RIM into a global company, but also for the way they have worn the maple leaf on their chests. They insisted, for example, on basing RIM in Waterloo, and in the process contributed substantially to the creation of what has been dubbed Quantum Valley, an R&D hub consisting of three communities and hundreds of high-tech companies.

And they have used their personal wealth to invest heavily in personal passions with global benefits.

Mr. Lazaridis gave $170-million to establish the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and $100-million to the Institute for Quantum Computing. Mr. Balsillie has taken on world politics and international relations, donating $20-million to found the Centre for International Governance Innovation, in Waterloo and $50-million to establish the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and serves as chair of the Canadian International Council.

These are tremendous gifts and the payback, especially of Mr. Lazaridis’s far-sighted ambition, will not be known for many years, but they do have the potential to profoundly alter our world.

With respect to RIM, however, the ambition of Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis has had its downside. RIM’s fantastic success, which confirmed the duo’s brazen bet on the completely new and untested technology of push e-mail, fed a culture in which they failed to recognize their fallibility, a not uncommon characteristic in highly successful people.

Mr. Lazaridis, an engineer who inspired his workers to achieve what many thought impossible, dismissed Apple’s game-changing iPhone as a toy. Mr. Balsillie, whose professed belief in governance was so great he founded a think-tank around it, treated RIM’s own board as a rubber stamp. Which is why, despite years of drift, disappointing devices and plummeting U.S. market share that slashed RIM’s stock price by 75 per cent in 2011, it took until this week for the two to decide to step down. Most CEOs would have been long gone. And their replacements, Thorsten Heins as CEO, and former RBC executive Barbara Stymiest as chair, are not, at least according to RIM’s sagging share price, what the market was hoping for. On taking the reins, Mr. Heins, RIM’s former COO, dismissed the need for any “drastic change,” saying the company just needed a “bit more of an ear toward the consumer market.” But it will take more than that. The former Siemens executive has inherited a conservative company, one much more at ease with incremental change rather than radical innovation.

RIM’s story is by no means written, nor for that matter are those of Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis. Despite the slings and arrows being directed at them, they never took the easy way out. They could, like so many of their Canadian colleagues, have sold out rather than take on giants like Nokia and Apple. Instead, they proved a Canadian start-up could take on the world and win. And so, while one era may be over, it is to be hoped that another equally ambitious one for RIM, and Canadian companies inspired by their success, is beginning.

[kb5zht]

Fine line between dedicated persistence and mindless stubbornness. The former involves trying to cross a finishline; the latter, bashing your way through a brick wall using your skull as a battering ram.

Mike and Jim quit being concerned with victory and success when they chose the brick wall over the finishline- that being when the iphone set the new course and the market followed with a loud and clear vote (their dollars) along with investors (check out how far rimm has fallen), and they first continued to crank out the same devices with new digit-rich names, and second when they decided to give in and begin selling devices the market wanted but refused to show the fortitude to complete what they started as well as flushed integrity down the toilet when they broke promises, missed deadlines and failed to show any concern over their actions, learn from them and correct them. They even resorted to lying about deadlines they gave.

Good riddance.

My two cents worth.

[trelawrence]

Much has been made about the duo's inability to correctly gauge the impact of the iPhone, but in all fairness, I thought the concept was silly back then too.

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[Rickroller]

This one quote from Jim will always stick out to me, and at least to me, shows just how egotistical and out of touch he was.

Impossible. Impossible. This is quantifiable. It’s irrefutable. It’s impossible. If you take HTML5 scores, we have the highest HTML5 scores. It’s quantifiable. If you take the performance aspects and the scalability and the certifications of the BBX platform, it’s irrefutable. You take the security, you take the scalability, you take the standard tooling, you take the performance aspects, you take the compliance scoring … I mean, if that’s not enough, do you want a time machine? You realize how huge a deal we are around the world? I hope you guys realize. I mean, I met three heads of state last week, 12 carrier CEOs. We are at 50% odd market share in many of these markets. We’re the number one brand in South Africa, and number one in the U.K. It’s funny, this whole narrative doesn’t fit. Where does that $20-billion of sales come from?

[gjohnsto]

mike and jim not only set the market with blackberry, they created it. their product was not a paradigm shift, but a new paradigm all together. apple induced a paradigm shift. For any paradigm, the theory behind it has to be successful, and for rim and mike and jim their idea was wildly so. however, as we see with paradigm shifts, the only criteria for the uptake of a new paradigm is its success within the most boisterous/convicted faction within that field or market - the changes are not inevitable or even necessarily 'better' - and thus, seeing the merits of a paradigm shift from within an entrenched and successful paradigm is very difficult, and i would think even more so if you created it.
this is not to excuse jim and mike from their share holders, but think about einstein explaining relativity to the entrenched newtonian establishment and their hesitation to embrace it (despite its merits) - moreover, think about him explaining it to newton after 200 years of incredible success; but to be sure, the mobile market is not as clear cut as physics, and moves one **** of a lot faster.

if mr. heinz can exist outside of this framework (steer the company pragmatically, not ideologically), while fostering innovation within the company and being receptive to the market, then rim might be able to become successful within this new paradigm that apple created, and perhaps one day lead the shift into a new one.
and heck, it looks like einstein may have only been as correct as newton was anyway...

[kb5zht]

mike and jim not only set the market with blackberry, they created it.

Correct. But at the rate things are going, they will not be remembered or given credit; history mostly likely will pay homage to Steve Jobs. Right or wrong, history is full of examples of person A or group X being the pioneer and in the end game disappeared as somebody else took the reigns and really set the course. And by that i mean infinitely more successful. Most people outside of out tech-geek forums wont even know who Balsillie and Lazaridis are. But countless numbers in the unwashed masses know who Steve Jobs is.

Q: Who invented the lightbulb? If you say Thomas Edison you are wrong, but he is credited for it when in really he just expounded on the discovery of another, harnessed it, and took his place in history.

So, are we seeing that in the smart phone world? Looks like it...

[gjohnsto]

Originally Posted by kb5zht

Correct. But at the rate things are going, they will not be remembered or given credit; history mostly likely will pay homage to Steve Jobs. Right or wrong, history is full of examples of person A or group X being the pioneer and in the end game disappeared as somebody else took the reigns and really set the course. And by that i mean infinitely more successful. Most people outside of out tech-geek forums wont even know who Balsillie and Lazaridis are. But countless numbers in the unwashed masses know who Steve Jobs is.

Q: Who invented the lightbulb? If you say Thomas Edison you are wrong, but he is credited for it when in really he just expounded on the discovery of another, harnessed it, and took his place in history.

So, are we seeing that in the smart phone world? Looks like it...

granted. my point isn't about posterity, but about obtuse judgments about the leadership of those two made in hindsight; people who make these judgments would pretend they would have done things differently - and they might have - but they are not mike and jim, did not do what they did (particularly mike), and cannot relate to the immersed and entrenched position and culture that mike and jim were a part of and created.
again, i am not trying to be an apologist, only to point out that any criticism of these two in hindsight ought to be qualified by the circumstances - an incredibly successful strategy created a justifiably entrenched position, and mike and jim defended and pursued it passionately, battled against an upstart paradigm, and lost. their resignation admits this defeat. their battle has been well fought, and their rise and fall should be commended for its success which has gone part and parcel with the conviction they held in their successes and failures.
their legacy is solidified by the success of the iphone (which paradoxically sealed their defeat) and the vibrance of the smartphone market; the future of rim will be determined by the timeliness of their departure and the success of the company to innovate within the current paradigm/market under new leadership.
thanks mike and jim. for posterity, i hope history does you better than the judgment of your contemporaries.
thorsten, let's see what you've got.

[TRlPPlN]

Originally Posted by gjohnsto

thorsten, let's see what you've got.

+1 I'll give him the whole 2012-2013 to prove that he does have what it takes. RIM may not be on top ever again but if thorsten, can improve the market share and have RIM stay top3, i'll be satisfied.

[scalemaster34]

Originally Posted by gjohnsto

if mr. heinz can exist outside of this framework (steer the company pragmatically, not ideologically), while fostering innovation within the company and being receptive to the market, then rim might be able to become successful within this new paradigm that apple created, and perhaps one day lead the shift into a new one.
and heck, it looks like einstein may have only been as correct as newton was anyway...

Going to be very hard for him to "think outside the box" when he is still trapped in that box with the guys that made the box.

They reason many companies look to the outside for new CEO's is to bring in someone fresh with new ideas and new ways of doing thing. You hire from within if you want to keep things stable and not rock the boat.

[gjohnsto]

Originally Posted by scalemaster34

Going to be very hard for him to "think outside the box" when he is still trapped in that box with the guys that made the box.

They reason many companies look to the outside for new CEO's is to bring in someone fresh with new ideas and new ways of doing thing. You hire from within if you want to keep things stable and not rock the boat.

true, but he doesn't have to make a paradigm shift, just produce within the current environment (that is, the consumer oriented smartphone market). by existing outside the paradigm, i merely mean not taking an entrenched ideological position, but working pragmatically towards implementing a strong device within the current market while making appropriate upgrades - thorsten is not there to be a visionary, to change the game, and doesnt have to be, he merely has to leverage the puzzle solving ability of his staff (and ensure he has the right staff to do this) within the current paradigm/market space. !execution of relevant products!
and on that note, if he can succeed in doing this, it appears that qnx will have the flexibility and dynamism to react to any major advancements within the current market place, and even forseably even be able to adjust to a full sale paradigm shift.