Archive for March, 2010

Nick Waddell, editor of the Dollarton Cantech Letter, has done a great job in his April edition. In addition to a Q&A with me about my book, the package also contains reminiscences by Adam Adamou. Adamou was the first investor Jim Balsillie told his story to during a one-day Bay Street blitz to raise capital in 1996. That part is in my book. Adamou’s version of events is both hilarious and offers a lesson to early-stage investors.

Here’s the link.

If you live in Mississauga or Brampton (and one million people do) tune in on Thursday at 2 p.m. for In Business with David Wojcik. The half-hour segment on Rogers Cable Channel 10 also features telecom analyst Lawrence Surtees. Surtees explains why Nortel failed; I talk about how Research In Motion succeeded.

In the show taped today we both agreed on one thing: the best technology CEOs in Canada right now are RIM’s Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. We are good company. Barron’s today announced that Mike and Jim are on the magazine’s list of the the 30 most respected CEOs in the world.

Local cable draws as many viewers as some network shows. In Business, now in its second year, focuses on numerous topics of interest to startups as well as small and medium-sized business. Nortel is a lesson in what not to do; RIM provides secrets of success.

But for all RIM’s achievements to date,  a worried Wojcik asked: “Isn’t RIM a one-trick pony?” I paraphrased Winston Churchill: “Some trick, some pony.”

In addition to this Thursday’s air date, the show will repeat six more times in the coming days. If it’s judged among the season’s best, the show could still be running this summer. See you then!

Of all the prestigious invitations issued to authors, at the top of the list is an interview with Heather Reisman. The event takes place every month or so at the flagship Indigo store in mid-town Toronto at Bay and Bloor. Elizabeth Gilbert and Jack Welch are among the five-star authors who have been interviewed by the CEO of Indigo in front of an audience and then stay on to sign books.

I’ve never been invited; that’s how I know it’s prestigious. But today I went one better: I was Heather Reisman. Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts and author of No Apology, was the invitee at today’s 12:30 event. Heather could not be there, so I was asked to introduce the Governor and ask four questions. As a fellow author, I happily complied.

Romney is easy-going and unpretentious, dynamic and intelligent. He wowed the crowd with his gratitude for Canada’s troops in Afghanistan, views on mutually beneficial trade ties, and tales of his summer cottage near Grand Bend, Ont., on Lake Huron.

Romney, who dropped out of the presidential primaries before Super Tuesday in the last go-round, wouldn’t say if he’ll run again in 2012. He would only go so far as to say he’ll wait until after the mid-term elections this November before deciding. With the him at the helm, you get the idea that Canada-U.S. relations would improve. “We are committed to common causes,” he said.

I wore a jacket and tie. Romney had on jeans and a sports shirt. One of us was dressed wrong. I think it was me. But, hey, when you’re standing in for the CEO of the biggest bookstore chain in the country – and your books are on her shelves – you want to do right by her.

Last night I spoke at the Rotman School of Management about my new book. About 110 attendees bought a book and more than half of them lined up to have it autographed. Another 25 people were there to hear the half-hour talk and the Q&A that followed.

I was surprised at the breadth and diversity of the audience. One couple had driven 45 minutes from Newmarket, there was a recent PhD grad from McGill, a freelance writer, a smattering of lawyers and accountants, small business owners, teachers, a RIM employee and many others who were giving the book to a son or daughter or niece in the hopes that the story would inspire them.

That’s a theme I’ve heard a lot in the past two weeks. Canadians are proud of RIM and what the company has achieved on the international stage. Equally important, Research In Motion is beginning to give birth to other startup companies. For most of the time I was working on the book, I kept wondering when this would happen. In recent weeks, I’ve heard about a few people who have left RIM to strike out on their own. More power to them, I say.

We need more RIMs to keep our best and brightest graduates in Canada at work in rewarding jobs. Maybe some of them will launch their own small businesses that will grow to be large businesses. As I told the audience last night, the main ingredients for success in any start-up are: a good idea, excellent colleagues, persistence, keeping an eye on costs, and – as Mike Lazaridis would be the first to say – a little luck along the way.

Here’s a link to a video, as supplied by the Rotman School, of my talk.

In the last two weeks I’ve talked about my new book on more than 40 radio stations across Canada from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island. The most efficient time spent was doing what’s called Radio Syndication at CBC. From a Toronto studio the size of a broom closet I taped 11 ten-minute interviews, one after another, in a three-hour blitz. The marathon included Corner Brook, Sydney, Sudbury, Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary, Yellowknife, Vancouver, Prince George/Prince Rupert, Kelowna and Victoria.

The hosts in all 40+ cases were, without fail, genial and gracious. Radio is a great connector in this country. Hockey might be Canada’s passion, but radio is our friend and mentor. As Freddie Mercury of Queen sang in Radio Gaga, “Everything I had to know, I heard it on the radio.”

Of all the themes I encountered during the the four years I spent researching my new book on BlackBerry, the most repetitive was this: Research In Motion has done fine, but it’s all over. Or, BlackBerry has done well but there’s a new rival on the scene that will end the device’s supremacy. A variation appears in today’s Globe and Mail in a piece written by Simon Avery, an able journalist who has been covering technology for more than a decade.

Today’s version of the thesis is that RIM’s technology is outdated and investors are shorting the stock, betting it will take a tumble. I’d like the shorts to be wrong, just because I don’t admire such investment styles, but there’s another reason: they may in fact be wrong.

First off, the article is based on the thinking of one lone analyst among the scores of analysts who follow RIM. For every naysayer, there are ten boosters who have a buy on the company.

But secondly, and more important, how realistic is any analyst’s prediction? In the summer of 2008, when RIM shares were at $140, an awful lot of analysts had targets of $200. Then came the global meltdown that everybody missed, RIM fell along with everyone else, bottomed out at $40, and has doubled since then.

No, the future is impossible to know, but we could pay attention to the present. The funny thing about all these articles – and there was another in the Sunday New York Times about the battle between Apple and Google over smartphone supremacy – is that RIM’s current success is not even mentioned.

The plain fact is that BlackBerry has 43 per cent of the smartphone market in North America, the iPhone is a distant second with less than half RIM’s numbers, and everyone else brings up the rear with 15 per cent or less. I can can only assume the New York Times had a “provincial” view of the sector and did not mention BlackBerry because it was a Canadian product. If you’re writing about the Apple-Google fight for second place, shouldn’t you mention the leader? BlackBerry didn’t get a nod in the article that stretched over three pages. But those market share numbers, which to my mind say it all, didn’t appear in the Canadian newspaper either.

RIM’s next quarterly financial report comes on March 31. We’ll know then whether the shorts have played the stock’s near-term price right or not. As for the future, that will take longer to unfold. Meanwhile, based on the exhaustive research I did for my book, I think RIM’s good for the long haul and will continue to hold on to top spot in market share.

This morning I was a guest on The Current, the national CBC Radio show hosted by Anna Maria Tremonti. The topic was billionaires using last week’s Forbes list as a jump-off point. I knew there was to be another guest who would discuss the international scene. I would talk about Canadian billionaires in general and the three from Research In Motion in particular: Mike Lazaridis, Jim Balsillie and Doug Fregin.

As I approached the waiting area outside the studio, I could see the other guest, but didn’t know who it was until a CBC staffer made the introductions. “This is Brian Milner,” he said.

“My reviewer,” I said. Milner, in case you missed it, trashed my book in The Globe and Mail.

“Sorry,” he said with a sheepish grin. Sorry? Why ever would a journalist give a book a negative review and then apologize to the author? “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” I said.

Milner went on to say that reviews were good for book sales no matter what the reviewer said. He got that part right. BlackBerry is number 5 on The Globe’s list and number 6 on BookNet. Still, your apology is accepted, Brian.

My new book landed on the Globe and Mail best-seller list today in the number five slot. I’m in good company with three books by Malcolm Gladwell and one by Eckhart Tolle (praised by Oprah) ahead of me. Gladwell, who is from Elmira, Ontario, has a BlackBerry connection. He and Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research In Motion, knew each other at Trinity College and have kept in touch since their college days.

Being on the best-seller list is a real thrill. Thousands of books are published each year that never achieve this status. But I’ve long since learned not to get a swelled head about such things. Best-sellerdom is more about the topic than the author.

I can hear the reader enthusiasm on open-line shows when I’ve been a guest in recent days. Canadians are proud of Research In Motion. Imagine if we had ten such companies in Canada with an equally well-known global brand. We’d feel every day like we did that Sunday when Canada beat the United States in men’s hockey at the Olympics.

On Monday March 22 I’m speaking about my new book at the Rotman School of Management. It’s an honour to be invited to this prestigious venue in the Fleck Auditorium at 105 St. George Street on the University of Toronto campus. The event starts sharp at 5 p.m., I’ll talk for 25 minutes, then take questions until 6. Cost for the event is $32.95 and includes a copy of BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research In Motion.

Here’s the link to register. See you there! I’ll be happy to sign your book.

Whenever I bring out a new book, people always ask two questions. First, what’s next? It’s a crazy question, really. I’ve just spent four years on this project. Couldn’t we enjoy the moment?

Second question is: How’s it doing? I’m delighted to report that in its second week of availability my book seems to be doing very well. The Globe and Mail today says “BlackBerry” is #2 on the business best-seller list, right behind “Who Moved My Cheese?” which has been off and on the lists since it was first published in 1998.

On Amazon.ca “BlackBerry” is ranked #54, not bad when you consider they have hundreds of thousands of books in the warehouse, ready to ship. Click on the link above, buy the book, and keep it moving up.

And, as soon as I know what’s next, you’ll read about it right here.