] founders mike Lazaridis and jim Balsillie were never buddies
] jim B was the business shark, to mike L the tech guy
] BB decided to forego the convergence of devices(aka smartphone), reason = bandwidth
] apple changed the game with the iphone and the AT&T deal
] 14 years from a waterloo garage to the kings of the tech world,
] now a 20B company, what do you do
] board was seasoned business people who didnt really know tech or sv
] fines for patent infringement, stock options manipulation
] jim+mike very divided over stock options, had to go before official, mike blamed ] jim, jim felt he was thrown under bus and was not appreciated
] company was run by 2 different CEO's with 2 different visions
storm, the phone verizon wanted, verizon wanted to get rid of keyboard, storm idea was touch screen with tactile feedback, worked in testing, not in return rate was 99%, late getting them out
playbook - launched without email app
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] mike and jim(IM) asked to leave company,
] global outage
] replaced with new CEO
] mike furious, no keyboard, bought out all
] still dont talk, each have their own personal interests
] no connnection to bb today , jim uses bold,
] today, passport and priv, latest bb models, not doing all that well
] company moving away from hardware, people are moving on,
] moving into s/w, iot, cars
] lessons - you can build a 20B company in Canada
] lessons - they are still alive, no doubt, 5B in cash
] lessons - bb effect - lost bb job, running their own startups, reflection of investment
*] business book of the year