RIM like APPL in 1997 or tomorrow's Kodak moment? I bet 10K that Thorsten can bend it like Steve did

By Nathan Rudyk

Know what Warren Buffett says about being greedy when others are fearful? I smell a lot of fear, am reading bucket-loads of loathing, yet see a turnaround opportunity at RIM. So today I fired up my online trading account to drop $10,000 on RIM stock priced at $15 and change.

What inspired the bet, and it definitely is a bet at this very early stage of Thorsten Heins' time in the CEO chair, was some investigation into Apple's stock price when it too was priced at "maximum fear". Apple had, said 90s-era critics, hopelessly lost its way after it suffered one of the biggest quarterly losses in Silicon Valley history.

Chris Nerney, a blogger at ITworld, researched Apple's stock price at $5.42 when Steve Jobs took back control of Apple in the fall of 1997. Based on today's price, a $10,000 investment in APPL at that time would now be worth $775,830. Nice bet.

Compared to yesterday's Apple, today's RIM is growing (from 75 million users compared to last year's 50 million), has positive cash-flow, no debt, and competes in a high-growth market. In a credit-crunched, profit-constrained world, that is no small thing. RIM has room to move.

Not that RIM's pile-on populous of critics need more air time, but I'll point out that Nerney rates the content of Heins' first performance as CEO as "absolute nonsense". Others, including the Financial Post's Theresa Tedesco, are just as brutal. In her case, she wrote today that hiring Heins as CEO proves "they are still clueless in Waterloo".

I'm not so sure. Just as Apple's transformation success pivoted on software (Steve's visionary but commercially unsuccessful NeXTStep OS, purchased by Apple for $429 million), RIM's software-based fortunes arguably rest on an extraordinarily solid, proven OS from Ottawa's QNX (purchased by RIM in 2010 for $200 million).

Earlier this month, QNX software, the software foundation of RIM's upcoming, lustworthy BlackBerry 10 "London" smartphone, won a "Best of CES Award" for its QNX CAR™ 2 application platform. Tens of millions of devices run QNX software, from cars to nuclear devices to Internet routers. Not long after the QNX acquisition, RIM acquired Alec Saunders (well respected mega-blogger, ex-Microsoft and QNX) as VP of Developer Relations. Another good move in the right direction.

From the 2010 RIM press release announcing the QNX purchase (one sentence underlined for emPHAsis):

"In addition to our interests in expanding the opportunities for QNX in the automotive sector and other markets, we believe the planned acquisition of QNX will also bring other value to RIM in terms of supporting certain unannounced product plans for intelligent peripherals, adding valuable intellectual property to RIM's portfolio and providing long-term synergies for the companies based on the significant and complementary OS expertise that exists within the RIM and QNX teams today."

Best technology of course, does not win. If that was true I'd be typing this post on a Xerox Alto. RIM's PlayBook launch was a product-disconnected joke, and the company's PR department, as witnessed by this infamous BBC interview with one of RIM's erstwhile co-CEOs (while a hapless PR person yammers off-camera), has widely been known as serially awful and inaccessible to journalists. But, those things can be fixed, RIM's market is no way resembles Kodak's, and RIM's new CEO seems intent on making the necessary fixes.

So, go Thorsten go! Bend it like Steve, or better yet, bend it like Thorsten.

p.s. If you have more time, check out this "Steve, what do we do about the press?" video from Steve Jobs. It was made in 1997, when Apple's stock was priced in a single, lonely digit.

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., the public relations and product marketing agency for global innovators. He is also an iPhone user who looks forward to switching to a QNX-powered BlackBerry in the near future.)

Hello, my name is Brian and I have money

That is quite the comment to make when you are talking to a business association that is very interested in where member companies might be able to find some financing. Brian Forbes, Executive Director of Ottawa’s Coral CEA made the statement recently while speaking to the Ottawa Wireless Cluster.

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OCRI's CEO Bruce Lazenby in Ottawa Citizen: Startups the key to tech Ottawa's success

By Nathan Rudyk

In today's Ottawa Citizen, Bruce Lazenby, OCRI's President & CEO, laid a out game-plan for Ottawa's tech sector that doesn't involve more government studies, wishful waiting for scarce venture capital (been doing any reading lately on the global credit crisis?) or reliance on 90s-era "critical mass" companies.

Instead, Lazeby advises "a laserlike focus on Ottawa’s entrepreneurs, their startups, and our ability to rapidly accelerate the success of those young companies."

He cites data from the Kauffman Foundation, the world's largest institution devoted to entrepreneurship, that has done exhaustive research on the true sources of sustainable job creation. From today's article:

In 2010, Tim Kane, a Kauffman senior fellow, analyzed a U.S. data set called Business Dynamics Statistics.

His conclusion? "Startups aren't everything when it comes to job growth. They're the only thing."

Kane's research shows that from 1977 to 2005, existing companies lost one million net jobs per year. On the other hand, startups in their first year added an average of three million jobs annually.

When you look at old versus new companies, this revelation on the power of startups is even more interesting. Gross job creation at startups averaged more than three million jobs per year during 1992-2005, four times higher than older companies. Counter to the prevailing wisdom of 20 years ago when big was beautiful, older firms on the whole experience job losses that are larger than job gains.

So Ottawa, let's embrace the beauty of our startups.

Please read Bruce's full article here: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Small+beautiful+Ottawa+tech+sector/5776149/story.html#ixzz1f0fUFUTH

(Nathan Rudyk is President and CEO with market2world communications inc., the public relations and product marketing agency for global innovators.)

Ottawa’s tech community turns out – again – in unprecedented numbers as the sector revs up

The Ottawa Centre for Regional Innovation (OCRI) hosted its regular execTalks forum at Scotiabank place on Thursday Nov. 24 and 270 - yes 270 people – at least twice the normal attendance got up early to be there. They came for breakfast, networking and to hear about how to boost productivity. In the room you could hear and feel the buzz. People were impressed with the turnout.

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Ottawa Entrepreneur Week: Here's the party you missed but it's going to continue "like it's 1999"

I'm still getting calls and emails from people saying "I can't believe I missed it!"/"I heard it was great" and the best comment: "We've got our mojo back!" three days after the kick-off party for the first annual and first-ever, 36-event Ottawa Entrepreneur Week.

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