Tyler Nelson

"RIM capitulated to pressure for more choice by opening its e-mail system to other handset makers. They would design keyboard phones, and RIM would supply software and links to connect the phones to its data network. In exchange RIM charged licensing fees. RIM called this new program BlackBerry Connect. Many employees couldn’t understand why RIM was rushing to aid competitors. It wasn’t. Like some Balsillie strategies, appearances were deceiving. Balsillie and a small team of executives had other ambitions for Connect. This was more than a licensing program; it was a Trojan horse. RIM’s long-term game was to buy time. Competitors who signed up with RIM would be preoccupied making BlackBerry Connect phones rather than creating their own rival e-mail service. RIM gained an inside peek at rivals’ long-term development plans and opened the door to new customers. Every enterprise customer signed up under the program represented another stream of service access fees for RIM. It wasn’t empowering competitors at all; it was locking in its lead. “Sometimes you have to disguise yourself as another animal in the forest,” says Tyler Nelson, a RIM vice president who ran the program. Lazaridis was initially concerned that Connect would distract RIM’s engineers and designers at a time when RIM was racing to keep up with demand and introduce new BlackBerrys. He never worried, however, that corporate customers would abandon RIM for the Connect phones offered by other handset makers. Their Connect phones could not hope to match the security and encryption protections that made BlackBerry such a valuable business communications tool. “We knew ultimately that the enterprise customer … was never going to go for it, because it was not a verifiably secure solution,” he says. “It was our advantage. It wasn’t hidden; it was in plain sight.” Unaware of RIM’s hidden agenda, phone makers in Europe and Asia flocked to the program to strengthen their presence in North America with BlackBerry-enabled phones. Samsung was so keen to make a Connect phone that one of its employees idled for weeks at a Waterloo hotel waiting for RIM to grant him a meeting with Balsillie. Finally the visitor appeared at the company’s offices in a distraught state. Samsung, he explained, would not let him return home to his family and job in South Korea unless he secured a Connect deal. RIM opened Connect discussions with Samsung, and the manager was free to fly home. RIM’s most dedicated Connect partner was Nokia. The Finnish phone maker had been trying to break into the U.S. wireless business market for years, and Connect looked like an easy shortcut. Nokia’s executives did not worry about dancing with a competitor because Balsillie played down RIM’s ambitions during initial discussions in 2002. “He emphasized he didn’t believe RIM would be able to compete in the hardware business [and] might even give up their hardware business,” says Panu Kuusisto, who managed Nokia’s Connect agreement with RIM.…"

"To Balsillie, meetings were corporate theater. You had to memorize your part before the curtain rose. Usually, Balsillie was the leading man, but he was willing to take on any role his team required for customer meetings. He could play the flinty, ice-veined negotiator or maintain a quiet presence, depending on what was needed. Tyler Nelson, who led several key business development initiatives after being hired by Balsillie in mid-1998, says: “Jim would say, ‘If you bring me into a meeting, use me for effect. What do you want me to do?’—but you had to make sure he was 100 percent [onside]. If not, a meeting could go sideways fast.” Once Balsillie approved a meeting agenda, everyone on his team was instructed to stick to the script. “I hate being thrown off by others in a meeting,” Balsillie says. “I get edgy when people are not prepared.” Even though Intel was a RIM partner, Balsillie was wary. You could never be certain of any customer, supplier, or competitor. Meetings were a potential minefield. “You learn quickly that this is serious business,” Balsillie says, “and you don’t make an independent move unless you know all aspects of the plan and exactly what you’re doing, because the penalty for a misstep is severe.” Overprepared and inexperienced, Klimstra knew his role: to answer technical questions. Otherwise, Balsillie had told him, say nothing. While Klimstra viewed Intel as a friendly ally, RIM’s chief saw the semiconductor giant as a dangerous, tricky heavyweight whose every employee lived by former CEO Andy Grove’s mantra, “Only the paranoid survive.”"