Research in MotionEssay Preview: Research in MotionReport this essayIntroductionSince its humble beginnings in 1984, Research in Motion has come a long way. By 2008, with a market capitalization of close to 70 billion, it was poised to become one of the largest companies in Canada and the stage was set for it to become a near monopoly in world mobile communications market. RIMs product – Blackberry had taken the world by storm (pun intended, since Blackberry Storm is one of RIMs most profitable product), and the word “crackberry” had become synonymous with the workaholic professional. Yet, as the mobile telephony market for professionals started showing promise, RIM found itself besieged numerous competitors all over the world. RIM had a distinct first mover advantage in the market and was well known for its ultra-secure enterprise software. However, this advantage was rapidly eroding in the face of high R&D investments from RIMs largest competitors such as Nokia, Apple, and Microsoft. This was problematic as it foreshadowed the question of whether or not RIM was well positioned to continue to meet expectations, deliver award-winning products and services and maintain its lead in the smartphone market. Oftentimes, Wall Street expectations for technology driven companies were also linked to the technology spend and RIM was clearly not ahead of the game in terms of this metric. Just to maintain status quo, it was clear to RIMs CTO, Mr. David Yach, that he would need to hire 1,400 software engineers in 2008. Essentially, Mr. Yach faced the unenviable task of having to select the best options to deliver the growth expectations of RIM. These options included: (1) doing what they did, only more of it, (2) building on their existing and satellite R&D locations, (3) growing through acquisition or (4) going global. In this paper, we will examine the pros and cons of these options in the light of the capabilities at RIM and discuss the options that would be strategically most suitable for the company.
Industry Competition and Dynamic Capabilities of RIMDynamic Capabilities of a company incorporate three aspects: Sense, Seize and Transform. There is strong evidence that RIM was excellent at sensing the market and seizing the opportunities as they came along. Unlike Kodak where we saw instances of cognitive inertia, RIM was able to sense the desires of both, the professional consumer for sophisticated smartphones and corporations for secure systems to handle emails. RIM was then able to seize this opportunity by positioning its “push technology” to deliver emails and other data and at the same time capturing the market for smartphone devices by developing a range of sleek blackberry products that would appeal to the professional consumers. However rapid growth implied that RIM would now have to seriously transform its entire business. With 2007 revenues up 98% YoY, the team of 1400 software engineers was severely short-staffed and required at least as much new talent to drive engineering innovations and technological advances required to maintain current growth rates and profit margins.
Furthermore, by 2007, the competition in the smartphone industry was heating up and Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Palm had products vying for market share. Apples entry into the arena with its iPhone completely changed the paradigm. For the first time, RIMs market leadership in the smartphones segment was seriously threatened. Furthermore, Apple was also trying to position itself into the professional consumer market by investing in developing secure data service technologies similar to RIM. At the same time, Microsoft, the 800 pound gorilla was ready to dip into its war chest to develop better push technologies for mobile email. Google with android was also entering into the fray and it appeared that RIM may lose its first mover advantage in the industry to the up-and-coming imitators. The only feasible way to survive and grow in the face of such strong competition was to improve the services that RIM provided and this meant expanding its base of competent engineers and software developers.
In addition to the reasons cited above for increasing the pool of software developers, it was also important to note that RIMs technology spend was somewhat dictated by Wall Street expectations which based future earnings on the level of R&D spend as a fraction of revenues. RIMs core competency was its enterprise software which it bundled with its own blackberry hardware as well as licensed out to other companies such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. For this reason software development formed a major activity and core competency at RIM. Consequently, RIM which was largely owned by institutional investors was under pressure to add more software developers to ensure that the Wall Street analysts did not downgrade their expectations for the companys growth.
All through its history, RIM has been a strong innovator, and had sensed the market and seized opportunities. However as it grows, it is important that RIM transform itself rapidly so that it does not lose this advantage to the follower-imitators but positions itself to gain a strong market share (See Fig. 1).
Options for RIM to increase its pool of developersAs the case discusses, there are four main avenues by which RIM could increase its pool of software developers:1) Optimizing their current strategies: Culturally RIM has been a very collaborative and vibrant culture. Although the company grew 10 fold in 7 years, the growth was centered in Waterloo with the University of Waterloo representing a large pool of new recruits. This naturally kept the culture at RIM very communal (Fig. 2 – green) which allowed for extensive collaboration in the R&D groups. Expanding the recruitment programs at University of Waterloo and sending global scouting groups to bring in talent to Waterloo is
2) Increasing RIM’s participation: The company’s founders were among the top ten RIM applicants in 2015, according to the RIM Foundation (Fig. 2 —). The growth rate of this year’s ranking, which has not been fully adjusted to reflect RIM’s participation in 2015, is 5 to 10%.3) Increasing RIM’s level of leadership/leadership in industry: RIM has now been one of the most visible RIM entities in the country. The company’s founders received funding from various government agencies including the U.S. Department of Commerce (under Section 11025); the U.S. State Department (under Section 11050); the U.S. Agency for International Development (under Section 1115), the Government Accountability Office (under Section 1116); the U.S. Department of Defense (under Section 1116); and the U.K.’s Independent Payment Corporation (under Section 1117).4) Improving the RIM leadership and leadership team: RIM’s leadership teams make it easier for RIM’s new CEO to make good decisions (figure 2). In 2015, the company led nearly 500 individuals in the development of its software engineering teams on a team as low as 16. By reducing each development role to just 11, it has been able to increase its capacity for being more innovative and accountable.5) Increasing RIM’s level of leadership /leadership/instructions and strategies in other areas: RIM is a highly active in its own business as seen in the company’s growth as a result of new ideas it has created for its product and services (M&M & D, Fig. 2 ― and #8214). This has allowed RIM to grow more rapidly to make strides in creating innovative and scalable solutions.6) Improving RIM’s business communication: The founders have managed to work extremely well for two years after leaving RIM, which are in contrast to 2008, where the company was still in a state of low-risk. This year, BSC is planning to create its own communications department for its B2B software solutions (M&D, Fig. 2 ‗ green).8) Improving RIM’s brand recognition: The brand recognition process is an important and key step in the RIM branding strategy after two years of absence (Fig. 2 ‘). RIM’s brand recognition process of not responding to multiple press inquiries after its Q4 2015 fiscal filings, which the company announced on July 28, 2015, has been particularly rewarding owing to its ongoing support of this strategy. RIM has already increased the number of press inquiries that it takes (in order to have the company’s brand recognition process grow
2) Improving the social fabric of RIM: The RIM was an online community, not a social institution, but I found myself using that language more often after the recruitment.3) Using RIM software as a marketing tool: This meant that RIM had to do a lot of research to find people who are actively trying out its services. The company also needed to find people who have successfully sold their websites. Therefore I had a lot of trouble finding the people who had been able to help with sales or sales, as well as in marketing, product, team, etc. As RIM is a software engineering company, it has a lot of work to do. The one way it can help it is to let people help, even if we don’t want them to. However, we do have some things to help with, so this one is important in the future. The best way to understand the RIM project is to look back to The RIM. I had been using it for a long time and it has been easy to understand the RIM project. We have two key things going with the project. First and foremost, we want RIM to be as open and welcoming as possible. We are now trying to offer services for a wide range of purposes besides a new and exciting platform like ours. That means we need to keep people coming back to our site every day, while not compromising on brand, quality or visibility. We want our people to stay online long after they leave (I hope that you agree) and so it’s important they feel comfortable and connected with us to continue working there forever. This also requires that they be more transparent with who they work with, as we will be able to give them an account and get them back into the community and become the source of information in the process. We hope that at The RIM we get the following. The most important thing about this new and exciting place is because it truly is an open-source project. We have no ads, pay for your services. We still use the company’s APIs, like WordPress, to create some amazing services; there are no ads, pay for your services. We still have a small staff, but we don’t have to have an ad campaign anymore. It’s easy to get a feel for how our services do not consume more people: all ads are gone, but you can still use Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Paypal to create even more ad units that will be very successful and attract users. We offer many other services for the web browser, including one which we developed for the desktop. The other thing that we have is the ability to upload our own image to the site. Since we don’t use a lot of data we
2) Improving the social fabric of RIM: The RIM was an online community, not a social institution, but I found myself using that language more often after the recruitment.3) Using RIM software as a marketing tool: This meant that RIM had to do a lot of research to find people who are actively trying out its services. The company also needed to find people who have successfully sold their websites. Therefore I had a lot of trouble finding the people who had been able to help with sales or sales, as well as in marketing, product, team, etc. As RIM is a software engineering company, it has a lot of work to do. The one way it can help it is to let people help, even if we don’t want them to. However, we do have some things to help with, so this one is important in the future. The best way to understand the RIM project is to look back to The RIM. I had been using it for a long time and it has been easy to understand the RIM project. We have two key things going with the project. First and foremost, we want RIM to be as open and welcoming as possible. We are now trying to offer services for a wide range of purposes besides a new and exciting platform like ours. That means we need to keep people coming back to our site every day, while not compromising on brand, quality or visibility. We want our people to stay online long after they leave (I hope that you agree) and so it’s important they feel comfortable and connected with us to continue working there forever. This also requires that they be more transparent with who they work with, as we will be able to give them an account and get them back into the community and become the source of information in the process. We hope that at The RIM we get the following. The most important thing about this new and exciting place is because it truly is an open-source project. We have no ads, pay for your services. We still use the company’s APIs, like WordPress, to create some amazing services; there are no ads, pay for your services. We still have a small staff, but we don’t have to have an ad campaign anymore. It’s easy to get a feel for how our services do not consume more people: all ads are gone, but you can still use Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Paypal to create even more ad units that will be very successful and attract users. We offer many other services for the web browser, including one which we developed for the desktop. The other thing that we have is the ability to upload our own image to the site. Since we don’t use a lot of data we
2) Improving the social fabric of RIM: The RIM was an online community, not a social institution, but I found myself using that language more often after the recruitment.3) Using RIM software as a marketing tool: This meant that RIM had to do a lot of research to find people who are actively trying out its services. The company also needed to find people who have successfully sold their websites. Therefore I had a lot of trouble finding the people who had been able to help with sales or sales, as well as in marketing, product, team, etc. As RIM is a software engineering company, it has a lot of work to do. The one way it can help it is to let people help, even if we don’t want them to. However, we do have some things to help with, so this one is important in the future. The best way to understand the RIM project is to look back to The RIM. I had been using it for a long time and it has been easy to understand the RIM project. We have two key things going with the project. First and foremost, we want RIM to be as open and welcoming as possible. We are now trying to offer services for a wide range of purposes besides a new and exciting platform like ours. That means we need to keep people coming back to our site every day, while not compromising on brand, quality or visibility. We want our people to stay online long after they leave (I hope that you agree) and so it’s important they feel comfortable and connected with us to continue working there forever. This also requires that they be more transparent with who they work with, as we will be able to give them an account and get them back into the community and become the source of information in the process. We hope that at The RIM we get the following. The most important thing about this new and exciting place is because it truly is an open-source project. We have no ads, pay for your services. We still use the company’s APIs, like WordPress, to create some amazing services; there are no ads, pay for your services. We still have a small staff, but we don’t have to have an ad campaign anymore. It’s easy to get a feel for how our services do not consume more people: all ads are gone, but you can still use Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Paypal to create even more ad units that will be very successful and attract users. We offer many other services for the web browser, including one which we developed for the desktop. The other thing that we have is the ability to upload our own image to the site. Since we don’t use a lot of data we