It's time for RIM to grow up, new CEO Thorsten Heins told PCMag in a Sunday evening phone interview. All is not right at the BlackBerry maker, but "flawless execution" and a less improvisational approach to innovation will help fix the company's sinking market share in North America, he said.
Formerly RIM's COO, Heins took the CEO role last night, replacing RIM founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. With five years' experience at RIM, he's the company's Tim Cook to Laziridis' Steve Jobs: the sober executive focused on getting things done, rather than the technology visionary.
"If you look at where RIM is, I wouldn't say it's in startup mode, but it's still driven in its processes by [the] startup [idea]," Heins said. "I have 27 years in telecommunications, and I think I have a very sound and decent understanding of the telecom business. I was a good partner for Mike and Jim on the technical side, but I've also run businesses."
Heins previously worked at Siemens, where he rose to the rank of CTO during a 23-year tenure.
"Mike and Jim took this company from $294 million, within ten years, to $20 billion," Heins said. "It's grown so dramatically we have some scaling challenges we need to tackle. I can help in bringing these products to market on time, with good quality."
RIM's approach to innovation has to change as well, Heins said. The company was known for editing products after the development process started, but it needs to turn to "rigor and flawless execution, making sure we define product programs well at the beginning," he said.
"We will not change a product once we develop it," Heins pledged. "That was part of the RIM heritage, and it was part of the startup approach, but we're just too large scale to continue that. We'll continue to innovate, but on a separate stream ... than products already about to hit the market."
That ad-hoc approach to innovation may have been seen in the checkered history of RIM's PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 platforms. The PlayBook launched without native email or calendar apps, and even in its new PlayBook 2.0 incarnation, can't connect directly to the company's BlackBerry Enterprise Servers. Meanwhile, rumors have swirled around various BlackBerry 10 phone projects being started and cancelled over the past few months.
Heins said the PlayBook has "really cool stuff" inside, but admitted the company may have been "over-aspirational" at the product's launch.
"We hit some bumps in the road and we learned our lessons in what to do better," he said.
Heins said he'll start turning around the company this year, but he has a thin portfolio to work with. Without RIM's new BlackBerry 10 phones—which are now slated for the second half of the year—all he has are phones running the older BlackBerry 7 OS, which are thunderingly popular in nations such as Indonesia but haven't attracted North American or European consumers.
"BlackBerry 7 is a really competitive product," Heins insisted. "We need to do more marketing and communications to tell people what we are, who we are, and what we bring to the table. I really want to strengthen the communications with consumers and with the market … and then with BlackBerry 10 coming around, we will regain market share and market strength. That's clearly the objective," he said.
For more, see PCMag's year in review for RIM.