I just watched the blackberry series last night. It was a great series and I recommend watching it.
It really brought me back to that time. I actually lived in Waterloo from 2005 to 2010. When RIM was at its peak the world was watching Canada. It was a truly global company, leading the world in what would be smartphones. I knew so many people who worked at RIM and have a career because of that company. Times were great back then.
It made me realize that after the fall of RIM, things have sort of been downhill. I know RIM is still around, but nothing like it used to be. Shopify has also been a great success story, but even still not on the same level as RIM.
Why have we not had any real innovation in this country in almost 20 years?
We as a country have had a lot of innovation and host thousands of successful businesses. But a company like RIM is now impossible because engineering has been commoditized. Even the tech giants like Apple, Google etc… are just shadows of their former selves where true innovation dies in dark offices while corporate accounting focuses on products that have already proven successful.
Innovation at a large company is exceedingly rare and can’t outlive the employees that nurtured that environment.
Will there be a next RIM?
On a global scale? Sure, but in the context of a Canadian tech company getting that big again, I want to say unlikely.
Why have we not had any real innovation in this country in almost 20 years?
We’ve had some real innovation, but quite frankly most of the tech world simply isn’t that innovative. Blackberry astutely capitalized on being some of the first to recognize the utility of the Smartphone but that opportunity only really came around once in the past 30 years.
The only other opportunities to make that kind of money and impact, were maybe advertising driven social media like Facebook, and now with the AI boom there’s that level of money but it’s spread between chipmakers like NVidia and ai companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. But even the AI boom isn’t as big of a boom / change as the smartphone was. Maybe with Quantum Computing and a company like D-Wave we’ll see it again, but there simply aren’t going to be that many huge new markets like we witnessed with the birth of smartphones.
And realistically the modern tech and corporate landscape also make it even less likely to have a Canadian success like that. The wealth disparity between the trillion dollar tech titans and new startups mean that virtually every single current Canadian startup’s plan is to get acquired. I’ve interviewed at like 10 different startups and spoken with a bunch of friends at others, and none have the kind of long term thinking or drive to try and turn their company into an empire the way Balsillie did. They’d all rather cash out and accept a massive check from Google or Amazon or whatever. And it’s understandable given the size of payouts and the level of risk and drive it takes to truly build a massive global business, but it also means that I seriously doubt we’ll see anything like RIM again here.
I also just watched the BB movie last night and it was great, but it did make me pretty sad to think about what might have been.
Constellation and OpenText are both bigger today than RIM was at the peak.
Not relative to the size of the overall tech industry tho
I can’t speak to the rest of Canada, but in Alberta, unless your ideas relate to the oil and gas sector, there is no incentive for you here.
I drove down into southern Alberta to Waterton this fall. I was pleasantly shocked to see so many wind turbines in AB.
I was not surprised and disappointed to hear they have “paused” future development /support for these initiatives. It’s also disturbing the amount of abandoned wells and tailing ponds the AB taxpayers are on the hook for. It seems to be Private Capitalism for the profits, and Public Welfare for the clean up and many Albertans seem more than fine with this.
Blackberry at their peak 20,000 staff
OpenText today 24,000 staff.
One could argue thare ar Canadian Tech companies with larger presence than BlackBerry had. It’s just not consumer level things.
Blackberry controlled 45% of the smartphone market.
The closest comparison today would be Apple and the amount of money that they bring into silicon valley.
OpenText has also arguably done little to no innovation, just packaged up existing technology in regulatory compliant ways and then sold it to governments and large slow moving businesses.
We had Nortel but after 2008 Harper gave all their patents to the Americans
They failed much earlier due to poor business decisions, overbuild during the Dot Com boom, and corporate espionage.
The patent portfolio was just another nail in the coffin.
They weren’t into oil and gas so they weren’t eligible to be saved.
