Rapid Motion

Design Principle #3: You Can't Be "PC" in a Post-PC World

The technical demands of building the BlackBerry were huge, because Lazaridis and his design team set out to create more than just a sleek email appliance. They aimed to design a technically complex service that would be easy to use. In its current form, the BlackBerry comes with software that's installed on corporate servers using Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino; there is also desktop software that works with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. Since the BlackBerry is fully integrated, users don't need an extra address for wireless email.

To build a wireless email solution that's easy to use meant taking on a massive systems-engineering task. It meant writing the kind of server software that would work on both Exchange and Domino. It meant building a miniature, low-power, low-cost radio transceiver. It meant reversing the data flow of the Internet itself. "Up to that point, the Net was a 'pull' environment," Lazaridis explains. "You logged on, pulled in your email, downloaded it, and got off. We didn't want the user to have to go out and get data. We wanted data to come to the user. We had to reverse the flow."

An even bigger challenge loomed. Building the BlackBerry meant rejecting some of the computing world's most basic tenets. Even today, no one at RIM would argue that wireless devices are about to eclipse the personal computer. But RIM's employees know from hard-won experience that PC strategies can't compete in a post-PC world.

A case in point: the computer industry's addiction to Moore's Law, the proposition that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every 18 months or so. The inevitable result of ever-increasing hardware power is that software writers feel comfortable developing ever-more-complex code -- and that's not always a good thing. "In the PC world, you have less engineering discipline on the application end, because you know that next year you'll have more memory, a faster processor, and an infinite power supply," says Lazaridis. "In wireless, you can't get away with that. Wireless is inherently constrained in terms of memory, power, and bandwidth. We develop from scarcity, so we have to be disciplined."

Right from the start, Lazaridis believed that what would matter most to the BlackBerry's long-term success was not what RIM put into the device but what it left out. Only by eliminating certain features could engineers extend the life of its power source -- a single AA battery -- to three weeks. Only by leaving stuff out could they successfully launch an email message from a two-watt transmitter or conserve memory that's measured in megabytes (as opposed to a PC's gigabytes). In 1997, Lazaridis typed a white paper that road-mapped the BlackBerry's design. On the opening page, he wrote that RIM's engineers would define the device by outlining what it wasn't -- only then could they say what it was. His title for the paper: "Success Lies in Paradox."

This drive to define limits and to innovate within them led Lazaridis to partner with Jim Balsillie in 1992. RIM was taking off. The CEO needed a copilot. "There were so many complexities in terms of building out the product and growing the company that I realized I needed someone to handle the business side," says Lazaridis. "To me, it was an engineering problem. I defined what I needed, and I started looking -- although I had to go through two or three others before I found Jim. But it all began by recognizing my own constraints."

Design Principle #4: Grow by Saying No

Back in the early days of building the BlackBerry, RIM's engineers hung a sign over their cubicles. The sign issued a challenge to everyone who worked in the "pit." It read: "Have you saved a milliwatt today?" RIM's executives continue to apply their save-a-milliwatt focus to the company itself. Lazaridis and Balsillie believe that RIM has arrived at a perilous moment in its evolution: While it has the ingredients for sustained, profitable growth, RIM could founder if it embarks on too many diverse initiatives before fully strengthening its core business. Lazaridis says that these days his chief job is to derail any project or plan that threatens to drain energy or weaken that core. Saying no, he believes, will help RIM grow.

"The biggest mistake a company can make is to try to diversify when it's successful," he says. "You taste success, and your inclination is to try to take on new initiatives. But in fact, that's the time when you really have to redouble your focus."

So what is RIM saying no to, exactly? "We won't be an ISP," says Balsillie. "We won't be an OS. Because the moment that we become one of those things, we must also become the epicenter of the brand. And then we'd have to contend with some extraordinarily powerful constituencies. We can't declare that we're a digital bank and still think that we're going to partner with a Schwab or an E*Trade. And if we don't partner with them, do we really think that we can win against an AOL or a Schwab or a Compaq or a Microsoft? If we tried to take on any one of those companies, let alone all of them, we'd be toast."

Design Principle #5: Make Your Competitors Your Partners