BlackBerry company Research in Motion is going through tough times and is now shuffling its upper management cadre in order to
steer the beleaguered company into the right direction. Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have now passed the baton to Thorsten Heins, who is currently serving as the Chief Operating Officer. Lazaridis and Balsillie will retain their board membership positions though, however they will be relinquishing their co-chairman title too. Barbara Symiest will be the new chairperson of the board.
The change of guards has put temporary stop to the rumors about the possible sale of the company. Lately, it had been speculated that RIM is in preliminary sales talks with Samsung. The South Korean company denied any such development via a press release. According to the Wall Street Journal, the new CEO has made it clear that RIM is not looking for a suitor and that the company is now looking forward to new licensing agreements consequent to the launch of BlackBerry 10.
Commenting on RIM's problems, Thorsten Heins said, ". "As with any company that has grown as fast as we have, there have been inevitable growing pains. We have learned from those challenges and, I believe, we have and will become a stronger company as a result." He also said that the company is now looking to recruit a new Chief Marketing Officer for boosting its sales teams and product portfolio.
One thought on “RIM Gets New CEO: Co-Founder Takes Backseat”
Don’t blame CEO, they want RIM win.
RIM has strange culture and self distruct political environment.
In RIM if a new hired person figure out major problem and introduce efficient approach, both manager and his buddy group member will proof their wrong approach works. just like someone point out driving a car is right way, pushing a car is wrong way, then both manager and his buddy group member will hate you, and proof that 3 person can also move the car by pushing it. cheating email will be sent to some vice president, saying like: see, the car moving, pushing a car is a natural part of the process, in order to deny new hired contribution of introducing skill of drive a car, they have to deny merit of driving a car.
It is very strange company culture and strange company political environment, it promote stealing and cheating skill. RIM’s management may be a typical instance in MBA course.
This culture deny or steal hardworking team members’ contribution/innovation, generate strange political environment, destroy RIM.
So don’t blame CEO, some of their VPs and VPs’ expert generate terrible culture and self destruct political environment.