It makes me sad. Seeing a company that can rise to $130B in valuation and go down to $10B. Gives you perspective. And not to mention I was a client of them at one point, a passionate one.

Sad.

If you’ve ever read my stuff you know that I don’t believe in products, markets or finance as much as I believe in people, their ability to accept change and actually apply those changes into success. I like hiring inexperienced people that are smart, passionate and energetic in my opinion, and I want to slightly vomit when people mention the word “rolodex” during an interview. Conveying strengths in the form of “who you know” during an interview usually means you rely (too much) on your past versus your potential “dynamic future”.

 

I’ll take “dynamic future”.

 

Things move fast. Really fast. Today you’re this, and tomorrow you’re totally different. That’s why creating market size analysis, or talk about 3 year strategy is an important practice, I think, but mainly to give you an indication that your current direction is to pursue something that can be big if you succeed. Will you necessarily be there in 3 years? Will you stay tight to your decisions 3 years ago? I’m not sure. Well I hope for you (reader) that you at least question yourself during that journey if what you’re doing is what you should be doing.

 

I flew from Berlin to NY with a colleague of mine few days ago and on the plane I’ve set next to someone holding a Blackberry.

I asked her — “say what’s up with your blackberry?”

She said, “what do you mean?”

I asked, “well, why do you have one?”

She said, “I still like my BBM”.

 

Rim. Listen. Really. You are awesome and we all cherish everything you’ve done for us as mobile consumers. You invented the two typing thumbs concept, and you invented people writing long emails on their phone, you’ve invented the little bulb at the top going green when an email is coming in, you’ve invented secured emails, you’ve invented big corporates offering mobile devices to their employees, you’ve re-invented Canada, you’ve invented the clicked screen (versus touch like iPhone), you’ve invented the ultimate mobile keypad and you even invented BBM.

 

You’ve failed big time though in one thing. You have no competitive marketplace for applications and unfortunately companies like the NYTimes are stopping to supporting your OS, and so as us users following the leaders – iOS and Android.

 

(RIM! Shouting in my head).

 

Show you’re dynamic. Stop supporting your RIM Operating-System and integrate Android. Prove to the market you can say “we’ve failed and this is what we’re doing about it”, get us users passionate about your hard move, tell us you’ll give us the best device with the best applications, tell us you don’t think it’s fair that Samsung is kicking ass and even (god forbid) Motorola is selling more devices than RIM.

 

I feel good about it. Make the change and users will choose RIM devices over Motorola with a proper Android. I promise you I will.