Our generation needs an ENTREPRENEURIAL REVOLUTION.
I just read an article about RIM. It grew complacent. I stopped being entrepreneurial. It is a must that companies must always be entrepreneurial. Complacency has no place in a very competitive environment. You can not rest on your laurels. Complacency breeds stagnation and eventually failure
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/10/12/is-it-too-late-to-fix-research-in-motion/?feed=rss_home
The full article: by Rita MacGrath of Columbia University
Research In Motion exemplifies an all-too-common syndrome that I’ve studied extensively. The fundamental problem is that it is hard for management to realize that their competitive advantages of today are unlikely to last, and if they wait to build the next generation advantage until the warning signs are loud and clear, they have little hope of recovering their former glory. The issue is that far too few leaders are astute enough to make the right moves early enough to have the next act ready before the curtain closes on the previous one.
In RIM’s glory days, it owned the market for mobile corporate communication. All too quickly, the ‘BlackBerry prayer’ became a routine part of meetings, travel and even classrooms. Freeing executives up from their desks so that they could commune with their ‘crackberries’ created enormous market presence with a product so beloved that corporate-types panicked when there was a chance their device might be lost or that they couldn’t connect. It’s easy in an environment like that to focus on what I call the ‘exploitation’ phase of a competitive advantage. The pattern plays out over and over – the innovators get sidelined, resources are held hostage by those running the core business, leadership believes it can’t go wrong, and – for a while, customers are perfectly happy with what is on offer at the company. The problem is that it isn’t going to last, but everybody acts as though it will.
Then something happens – in the case of RIM, two somethings, namely the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the widespread adoption of the Android operating system from 2008. The operating systems behind both of these innovations changed customers’ perceptions of what a mobile device should be able to do. It should be able to seamlessly connect to the Internet. It should provide access to useful applications. It should be able to take and transmit pictures. It should be incredibly user-friendly and oh- of course – it should allow you to make phone calls and send and receive messages. Business customers started to want for their work lives devices as friendly as those they use for their personal lives. Oops.
RIM’s response is typical of incumbents facing a disruption such as this. The first response is no response – simple denial of any threat whatsoever. Thus, Jim Balsillie, when asked about the introduction of the iPhone and how it would affect RIM, had this to say to a reporter from Reuters in February 2007:
By this time, there is usually a frantic rush to match competitors on whatever features customers have found attractive – to try to catch up with copycat features. So too with RIM. The trouble is that despite considerable success in R&D and a big library of patents, RIM’s software wasn’t up to the job of creating a satisfying user experience. It’s Storm smartphone, touted as a compelling alternative, sported software so poor that it was universally criticized by analysts and consumers. The Torch, a subsequent model with a keyboard, was also underpowered and clunky to use. Its Playbook tablet has been a marketplace disappointment.
Aside from management not taking action early enough, RIM has also been caught in a fundamental shift in the underlying category. Making great products is not enough when customers are looking for a great total experience. Provide that experience, as Apple and to some extend the Android phones are doing, and loyalties flip in a heartbeat. According to one observer, one quarter to one third of all BlackBerry subscribers who came up for renewal earlier this year switched to other platforms.
On top of all that, you also have to wonder if the emphasis on trying to get back in the game with innovation has led RIM to neglecting its core value proposition. As this is being written, massive outages in its service are spreading throughout the network, whose rock-solid reliability kept many IT leaders from being willing to make a switch. And all this in the same week the iPhone 4S begins to ship and Google and Samsung reportedly are on the brink of releasing new versions of their Android-based phones. The RIM developer conference next week should be … well … interesting.
And the investing community? Long-suffering and starting to get fed up. An investment company called Jaguar Financial Services is leading the charge for a complete management makeover. They want the company to drop the two co-CEO’s, bring in a “transformational” leader, and consider ways to sweeten things for investors. Among these would be sacred cows under the current regime, such as splitting up the company or selling off its patents. With a market capitalization as of this writing of about $12 Billion, RIM still has resources to work with. But it may just run out of time to catch up.
More woes for RIM (maker of Blackberry)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/12/scitech/main20119620.shtml
I just read an article about RIM. It grew complacent. I stopped being entrepreneurial. It is a must that companies must always be entrepreneurial. Complacency has no place in a very competitive environment. You can not rest on your laurels. Complacency breeds stagnation and eventually failure
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/10/12/is-it-too-late-to-fix-research-in-motion/?feed=rss_home
The full article: by Rita MacGrath of Columbia University
Research In Motion exemplifies an all-too-common syndrome that I’ve studied extensively. The fundamental problem is that it is hard for management to realize that their competitive advantages of today are unlikely to last, and if they wait to build the next generation advantage until the warning signs are loud and clear, they have little hope of recovering their former glory. The issue is that far too few leaders are astute enough to make the right moves early enough to have the next act ready before the curtain closes on the previous one.
In RIM’s glory days, it owned the market for mobile corporate communication. All too quickly, the ‘BlackBerry prayer’ became a routine part of meetings, travel and even classrooms. Freeing executives up from their desks so that they could commune with their ‘crackberries’ created enormous market presence with a product so beloved that corporate-types panicked when there was a chance their device might be lost or that they couldn’t connect. It’s easy in an environment like that to focus on what I call the ‘exploitation’ phase of a competitive advantage. The pattern plays out over and over – the innovators get sidelined, resources are held hostage by those running the core business, leadership believes it can’t go wrong, and – for a while, customers are perfectly happy with what is on offer at the company. The problem is that it isn’t going to last, but everybody acts as though it will.
Then something happens – in the case of RIM, two somethings, namely the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the widespread adoption of the Android operating system from 2008. The operating systems behind both of these innovations changed customers’ perceptions of what a mobile device should be able to do. It should be able to seamlessly connect to the Internet. It should provide access to useful applications. It should be able to take and transmit pictures. It should be incredibly user-friendly and oh- of course – it should allow you to make phone calls and send and receive messages. Business customers started to want for their work lives devices as friendly as those they use for their personal lives. Oops.
RIM’s response is typical of incumbents facing a disruption such as this. The first response is no response – simple denial of any threat whatsoever. Thus, Jim Balsillie, when asked about the introduction of the iPhone and how it would affect RIM, had this to say to a reporter from Reuters in February 2007:
“It’s kind of one more entrant into an already very busy space with lots of choice for consumers. But in terms of a sort of a sea-change for BlackBerry, I would think that’s overstating it.’”Eventually, however, reality does kick in. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2011, Balsillie found himself in the embarrassing position of complaining about a comment by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop that the Nokia-Microsoft alliance had created a ‘three horse race’ between Windows, Apple and Android for the battle over dominance in smartphones. Smarting, Balsillie complained that he didn’t see how Elop could leave out RIM, citing strong profits and unit shipment growth. Here’s the problem: While the category grew 88.6% from 2009 to 2010, RIM’s grew only 36%, meaning that even if shipments increased, its share of the market declined.
By this time, there is usually a frantic rush to match competitors on whatever features customers have found attractive – to try to catch up with copycat features. So too with RIM. The trouble is that despite considerable success in R&D and a big library of patents, RIM’s software wasn’t up to the job of creating a satisfying user experience. It’s Storm smartphone, touted as a compelling alternative, sported software so poor that it was universally criticized by analysts and consumers. The Torch, a subsequent model with a keyboard, was also underpowered and clunky to use. Its Playbook tablet has been a marketplace disappointment.
Aside from management not taking action early enough, RIM has also been caught in a fundamental shift in the underlying category. Making great products is not enough when customers are looking for a great total experience. Provide that experience, as Apple and to some extend the Android phones are doing, and loyalties flip in a heartbeat. According to one observer, one quarter to one third of all BlackBerry subscribers who came up for renewal earlier this year switched to other platforms.
On top of all that, you also have to wonder if the emphasis on trying to get back in the game with innovation has led RIM to neglecting its core value proposition. As this is being written, massive outages in its service are spreading throughout the network, whose rock-solid reliability kept many IT leaders from being willing to make a switch. And all this in the same week the iPhone 4S begins to ship and Google and Samsung reportedly are on the brink of releasing new versions of their Android-based phones. The RIM developer conference next week should be … well … interesting.
And the investing community? Long-suffering and starting to get fed up. An investment company called Jaguar Financial Services is leading the charge for a complete management makeover. They want the company to drop the two co-CEO’s, bring in a “transformational” leader, and consider ways to sweeten things for investors. Among these would be sacred cows under the current regime, such as splitting up the company or selling off its patents. With a market capitalization as of this writing of about $12 Billion, RIM still has resources to work with. But it may just run out of time to catch up.
More woes for RIM (maker of Blackberry)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/12/scitech/main20119620.shtml
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