BlackBerrys are cult devices, inspiring a kind of slavish devotion perhaps matched only by Apple products. But while Apple’s corporate history is familiar to many, no one has written a comprehensive corporate history of Research In Motion, the company behind the iconic BlackBerry.
Canadian historian and author Alastair Sweeny is set to release the first such book in September. Called BlackBerry Planet: The Story of Research in Motion and the Little Device that Took the World by Storm, it tracks the evolution of the BlackBerry from RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis’ 1960s childhood to present day. Forbes reached Sweeny at his Ottawa home to discuss Lazaridis’ similarity to Steve Jobs, what RIM thinks of his book and why future BlackBerrys may morph into telepathic gadgets he calls “telebrain.”
Forbes: What inspired you to write a book about RIM, and why do you think no one has written one before?
Alastair Sweeny: Corporate history is my passion. I know people at RIM and people who do business with RIM who I knew would be helpful in terms of background. RIM is a great Canadian success story, so as a Canadian there’s a nice element there.
I also saw a business opportunity. This year is the 10th anniversary of the first true BlackBerry device. I figured someone would write about RIM sooner or later and it might as well be me. I was amazed no one had done a book yet when Apple and Microsoft have been done to death. It may be the remoteness of RIM, being up in Waterloo, away from Silicon Valley and all its tech reporters.
You mention you spoke to some people at RIM. How much access did the company give you?
It was a hard book to research. RIM was not too friendly. I interviewed some executives, like [former RIM director] Gary Mousseau and corresponded with the big guys [co-CEOs Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie] on e-mail, mostly on background.
I tried to chase some other people down and was unable to. Then I put Chapter 1 in its entirety on a public wiki site, which attracted the attention of several early engineers from RIM and RIM partners like Ericsson, BellSouth and [Canadian operator] Rogers. People came out of the woodwork in May and June, so we delayed the book for a month and added in more information. They were very forthcoming and would say things like, “No, you haven’t quite got it here.” I also have a friend with a BlackBerry collection that goes way back, who gave me some good insight on the devices.
It’s more fun to talk about how RIM got to this point than its current status as a mature corporation, so I concentrated on the peripheral and early guys. There’s also a lot of stuff out there that hadn’t been pulled together. It was like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle.
In the book, Lazaridis, who founded RIM at age 23, is likened to a modern Leonardo da Vinci. What’s your take?
I consider him a visionary who is smart enough to take his vision to market. [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs is like that. In the book, I talk about young Lazaridis being a Star Trek fanatic, tinkering as a student, trying to make force fields. He always had this straight-ahead vision and childlike sense of wonder. I think the Star Trek Communicator is the inspiration for all the machines he builds.
The similarities end at a certain point. Steve Jobs supposedly gets involved in everything. He can drive people crazy, but you see the difference in Apple’s quality of design. Early on, Lazaridis divided engineering from marketing. It insulated the engineers but also meant RIM was using clunky fonts until a few years ago. With RIM, form is function.
With Apple, maybe it’s the other way around.
RIM has had the same co-CEOs since 1992. What accounts for that longevity?
They’re a good tag team. Balsillie’s job is to give feedback to the engineers. He believed in RIM from the beginning; he even mortgaged his house to buy RIM shares. He can execute, and that’s been a large part of RIM’s success. All of a sudden, he arrives and RIM is playing hardball.
You dedicate an entire chapter to patent issues. How central were patents to RIM’s evolution?
The battle with NTP was a big grow-up experience for RIM. The settlement was the largest technology patent settlement in U.S. history, but I argue it was worth every penny. It was great publicity and by the time the trial was over, RIM’s business had quintupled or more, and $650 million was something they shrugged off. Plus, the settlement ensured that NTP had a whole bunch of cash to go after RIM’s competitors like Palm. Those battles are behind RIM now. Lazaridis now says, when anyone has a good idea, RIM patents it right away.
What do you see as the other defining events in RIM’s 20-plus years as a company?
Like any high-tech company, there are a lot of stories about subsisting on Coke and pizza, writing code for 36 hours straight. One of Lazaridis’ teachers told him the real technology breakthrough would be in mobile texting. After college, Lazaridis bounced from one contract to another, assembled a team and discovered a way to do two-way paging. When operators brought in Internet mail, RIM was ready. They had the market to themselves for a few years before people started to catch up.
Sept. 11 and the 2001 anthrax scare really made a case for BlackBerry’s necessity as a security device. The American government has half a million BlackBerrys in operation, making it, far and away, RIM’s biggest customer.
You include twin chapters on BlackBerry’s benefits and its social ills. Has all the talk about “CrackBerrys” affected RIM?
Linda Duxbury, a professor at the Carleton University School of Business did a multi-year study about BlackBerry use and how tough it is on some families. In her study, 66% of spouses felt the only appropriate use of BlackBerrys was during business hours, and 55% felt their partners inappropriately used their BlackBerrys several times a day. My personal view is that businesses should be aware of the damage that can be done if BlackBerrys are not controlled. Every business should have a policy on smart-phone use.
When RIM talks about this issue, it only says people can develop BlackBerry dependence, not addiction. The irony is that RIM thought BlackBerrys would improve quality of life because it allows for a quick, quiet connection that doesn’t bother other people.
What do you think RIM’s next move will be?
They’ve stumbled in a few areas. The company is getting big and bureaucratic; they have to watch that. I think they rushed the Storm to market, but they’re so passionate about getting it right, I imagine they will. RIM also didn’t take the Web experience as seriously as it should have, but I have no doubt it will pull up its socks and do a proper BlackBerry browser.
The real question is, how will they innovate, how will they keep up the pace? I was talking to an engineer who worked with RIM in the early days and asked, “Will RIM ever get away from the BlackBerry form factor and put its operating system out there for laptops and [Internet] tablets?” And he said, “I’ve been trying to get Lazaridis to do that for years!”
Tackling the global mobile market will be up to Balsillie. In order to beat Nokia, RIM will have to [sign deals] country by country, carrier by carrier. If anyone can do it, Balsillie can. He’s a take-no-prisoners guy.
You have this theory that RIM wants BlackBerrys to be “telebrains.”
The idea of the telebrain is a brain in your pocket. Experts say the future will bring many radios on a single chip, mobile storage as big as the human brain, high-definition mobile video and wireless spectrum galore. Lazaridis has been funding an institute of quantum physics [in Canada] for years. One engineer I spoke to said Lazaridis is interested in marrying quantum physics with mobile devices. You could also call it techno-telepathy; technology that allows people to stay in such close touch, it’s almost like telepathy.
A Brief History Of The BlackBerry
Elizabeth Woyke, Forbes
