RIM a Victim of Communication Democracy

RIM tumbled to its current humble position because it didn't continue to innovate. Instead, it chose to maintain a closed, imperious system when communication was being democratized. Elsewhere on this site, you’ll see a blog post by our own Lindsey Peacock that asks what everyone is thinking about Research In Motion’s sudden changing of the guard at the top – is it too little, too late?

By Tony Wanless / January 25, 2012

RIM tumbled to its current humble position because it didn’t continue to innovate. Instead, it chose to maintain a closed, imperious system when communication was being democratized.

Elsewhere on this site, you’ll see a blog post by our own Lindsey Peacock that asks what everyone is thinking about Research In Motion’s sudden changing of the guard at the top – is it too little, too late?

But I’d like to take another tack on the RIM problem. It is a problem: an innovation problem.

Too often, innovators come up with a fantastic idea, run with it, and through hard work, timing and some good fortune, turn it into a great business that spins out obscene amounts of money.

And then they sit there. And eventually they fade out of existence.

Now, obviously, RIM isn’t dead just yet. But it is wounded and appears to be on the innovation slippery slope to irrelevance. Deep-sixing their leaders and installing a lieutenant who has faithfully been following them for years isn’t going to stop the slide, unless he suddenly becomes a master innovator.

Everybody likes to say that Steve Jobs and Apple wielded the knife that began the bleeding at RIM. I don’t think so. Apple merely did what RIM did years earlier – created a game-changing but proprietary communications platform – but did it with better design and much more panache than the dull engineers at RIM ever dreamed of.

What I think really knocked RIM from its pinnacle was the entire concept of open innovation, especially as it’s embodied in Google and its free Android operating system. Google put it out there and a host of gadget makers turned it into something that’s taking over the world and shoving RIM out of the way.

RIM may have opened the door to this new world of communications, but its business model couldn’t sustain itself as that world took better form. It was built for corporates, priced for corporates and maintained a system for corporates.

But only a few need that kind of proprietary information control today. Now the battle for the hearts, minds and wallets of communications users is not in the corporate sphere, but among consumers.

Instant communication has become democratized and controllers like RIM are an anachronism.

What’s that you say? Isn’t the Apple empire a controlled system?

Yes, it is. But at this point it’s still an innovative one. As soon as it stops being one – and it will now that Steve Jobs’s guiding hand is gone – it will fall.

Just like RIM.