Rating - 3/5
Copy- Borrowed
Genre - Corporate History
Tracking the market cap of Reseach in Motion, now BlackBerry Ltd. gives you a sense of wonder. The creation & erosion of wealth- from $70B to $3B, in such a short span is remarkable. One can draw parallel to a video that goes viral & goes off your notice when a new video surfaces. Popular opinion is that the advent of iPhone & Android- Samsung led to the demise of the enterprise - the book does well to shatter that opinion.
The book is neatly divided into two sections - one depicts the rise of RIM & the other fall. The author maintains a fast pace taking the readers through the ups & downs, the struggles & victories, the similarities & dissimilarities of the co-founders that serve as the spine of the book. The author gives a lot of word-time to the villains who brought the company down - a legal tangle with an entity that pushed the focus away of the co-founders from the emerging players, the mobile networks who didn't allow RIM to put up a full browser, backdating options to the executives - to name a few. Surprisingly the author does not dig much into the lack of corporate governance & the roles of the directors which in my view, could have salvaged the company. The reader gets a fascination account of the challenges in the launch of the BB10 & the Playbook. There were bright spots which the author could have covered more on- BBM & the handset Storm. The book begins & ends in an obituary-like tone which gives an uni-dimensional view of the whole saga. The lack of quotes from the directors & just a few snippets from the co-founders also did not go down well.
Singularly Blackberry as a company has transformed the way we communicate. Instant messaging got into vogue because of this company. The book does not give enough credit to this cause. The book though lives up the title - it encaptures everything we know about the company, but only a few feet beneath the surface.
Copy- Borrowed
Genre - Corporate History
Tracking the market cap of Reseach in Motion, now BlackBerry Ltd. gives you a sense of wonder. The creation & erosion of wealth- from $70B to $3B, in such a short span is remarkable. One can draw parallel to a video that goes viral & goes off your notice when a new video surfaces. Popular opinion is that the advent of iPhone & Android- Samsung led to the demise of the enterprise - the book does well to shatter that opinion.
The book is neatly divided into two sections - one depicts the rise of RIM & the other fall. The author maintains a fast pace taking the readers through the ups & downs, the struggles & victories, the similarities & dissimilarities of the co-founders that serve as the spine of the book. The author gives a lot of word-time to the villains who brought the company down - a legal tangle with an entity that pushed the focus away of the co-founders from the emerging players, the mobile networks who didn't allow RIM to put up a full browser, backdating options to the executives - to name a few. Surprisingly the author does not dig much into the lack of corporate governance & the roles of the directors which in my view, could have salvaged the company. The reader gets a fascination account of the challenges in the launch of the BB10 & the Playbook. There were bright spots which the author could have covered more on- BBM & the handset Storm. The book begins & ends in an obituary-like tone which gives an uni-dimensional view of the whole saga. The lack of quotes from the directors & just a few snippets from the co-founders also did not go down well.
Singularly Blackberry as a company has transformed the way we communicate. Instant messaging got into vogue because of this company. The book does not give enough credit to this cause. The book though lives up the title - it encaptures everything we know about the company, but only a few feet beneath the surface.
