Yearly Archive: 2010

The MENS Club

In one of the many courageous moves by RIM on the road to success, in 1994 Mike Lazaridis called together all 20 employees – yes, that’s right, just 20 employees – to announce the company was going to focus on the wireless business. That meant giving up lucrative software contract work and other sure revenue-generators for a wireless world of risk. Lazaridis told the employees he was aiming high: the top five. “We called it the MENS Club – Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia and Siemens,” said Lazaridis. Along the way Samsung replaced Siemens, but the letters remained the same. “Our goal...

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May Day celebration

With BlackBerry now well and truly launched in the United States, I’m happy to say that publishers in three other countries have acquired rights: Britain, India and China. Aurum in Britain will be the next to bring the book out with a pub date of May 1 followed by Hachette India and China Machine Press. Among my fourteen books over twenty-five years, this is the first to be published in so many countries beyond Canada. I’m honored these publishers think the story is of such wide interest.

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Gordon Sharwood 1932-2010

Gordon Sharwood’s departure from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was in keeping with the principles of the man. In August 1969, Sharwood was reading the newspaper at breakfast when he saw an item saying Russell Harrison was being transferred from Quebec to run the bank on a day-to-day basis. Until then, that had been Sharwood’s role and he had done it well. Earlier that year, CIBC passed the Royal to become Canada’s largest bank. Such success was insufficient for Neil McKinnon, the autocratic chairman and CEO of CIBC, who toyed with potential successors among his senior executives for years. Sharwood...

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Cross-border promotion

As part of the U.S. book launch I signed several dozen books with personal inscriptions for mailing to American political and business leaders, top journalists as well as mavens in several other arenas. Recipients include Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Larry King. Among authors, journalists and commentators are Malcolm Gladwell, Graydon Carter, Walter S. Mossberg and Jim Cramer. Business leaders include Bill Gates and Andy Grove. In so doing, we took a page out of RIM’s early strategy: give away the product to “seed” the market among those who matter. Malcolm Gladwell explained the phenomenon in his book, The Tipping...

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Taking Manhattan (and maybe Boise)

Key Porter, my publisher, has this month launched sales of BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion in the United States. In the past my books have only been available through such U.S. websites as Amazon.com and the like. This is the first book I’ve written that’s actually on the shelves at major U.S. airports, Borders, Barnes & Noble as well as numerous independents. Of course, there is also availability through Amazon.com and other sites such as Alibris and Abebooks that began as used book sites but now offer new books as well. So anyone can go into the...

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None is the loneliest number

When my first book, “The Moneyspinners,” came out 25 years ago, my publisher, Doug Gibson, offered some savvy advice. Never go into a bookstore looking for your book, he said. It might not be there. And if you do go in, he said, don’t ask any of the sales staff about it. They’ll say they’ve never heard of it. Over the years, my books have done well, and I have pretty much followed his guidance. Until today. I happened to be walking past Indigo’s Bay and Bloor location in the Manulife Centre. I thought, I’ll just take a peek at...

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Bold new world

Of all the technological innovations of recent vintage, none has been more vibrant than blogs and social media. One of the attendees at my recent talk at the Rotman School arrived bearing her BlackBerry Bold 9700. Michelle Chau took notes using the Evernote application as well as several photos with the 9700’s camera. You can find her report on CrackBerry.com complete with photos of me, the book and the inscription page. The self-described “PR gal/Librarian by day, and CrackBerry addict by night” has done an excellent job summarizing the main points of my talk. You can also follow her exploits...

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Share price blues

Research In Motion has become the Rodney Dangerfield of the stock market: “It can’t get no respect.” Coming out of a global recession, the financial results announced yesterday looked strong. Year-over-year, revenue was up 35 per cent to $15 billion, the subscriber account base grew 65 per cent to 41 million, smartphone shipments grew more than 40 per cent to 37 million, and earnings per share were up 30 per cent to $4.31. Analysts, however, were expecting better. As soon as the numbers became available after the market closed, share price began falling in after-hours trading. By early evening, share...

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Adam’s rib

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.

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Some chicken, some neck

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...

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I was Heather Reisman

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...

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Inspiration and perspiration

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...

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Radio GaGa

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...

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The invisible giant

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...

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Selling well is the best revenge

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...

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