IDEA Man: Jim Balsillie

IDEA Man: Jim Balsillie by Brenda Boughton Jim Balsillie’s whirlwind schedule is enough to make your head spin. Good thing he has a handy wireless communications device in his pocket to help him keep track of it all. Who could have predicted, even five years ago, that the BlackBerry, this smartest of smartphones, would revolutionize the communications industry? Perhaps not even Balsillie himself, who, with co-CEO and company founder Mike Lazaridis, heads up Research in Motion, the wireless technology firm that has given us this handheld wizard, now available in 160 countries around the globe. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the BlackBerry. In January, RIM celebrated the shipment of its 50 millionth smartphone. Of those 50 million BlackBerrys, 26 million were sold in the past year alone. It is the top-selling smartphone in North America, and depending on how you define “smartphone,” some consider it the global leader as well. The Waterloo, Ont., company that had fewer than 10 employees when Balsillie joined it in 1992 now has 12,000 on the payroll, has continued to hire aggressively during the global economic downturn, and today is worth about US$45 billion. RIM is a Canadian and international success story thanks to the technical genius of Lazaridis and the business savvy of Balsillie, whose entrepreneurial skills first surfaced when he was a young boy in Waterloo holding down several paper routes and selling greeting cards door to door. In 1984 Balsillie completed his Bachelor of Commerce degree at Trinity College at the University of Toronto, where he also won Athlete of the Year. After working as a chartered accountant he went on to earn an MBA at Harvard in 1989. He joined RIM in 1992, investing $250,000 of his own money into the firm, at a time when Lazaridis and his RIM researchers discovered a way not only to receive a message on a pager, but to send a message back. The company then shifted its focus from developing pagers to working on two-way wireless communication. It was a good decision. Since then, Balsillie’s passion for making RIM the leader in “convergence technology” is matched by his passion for convergence of a human kind: in recent years he has ensured that this country’s leading thinkers, researchers, and students specializing in global issues have the resources and facilities they need to enhance Canada’s understanding of the world and its place in it. Perhaps it isn’t surprising that his philanthropic pursuits, like his day job, have significant global impact. It is for these achievements and more that Balsillie, 48, is being presented with the 2009 International Distinguished Entrepreneur Award (I.D.E.A.) by the Associates of the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business. He will be in town June 2 to receive the award at a formal dinner at the Winnipeg Convention Centre. The I.D.E.A. award was created 26 years ago “to honour an individual who has achieved international stature, outstanding business success and who has made exemplary contributions to the economic life

of Canada and the world.” Balsillie joins past recipients Israel Asper, Richard Branson, Paul Desmarais, Dame Anita Roddick, Martha Stewart, and last year’s recipient, Peter Munk, to name a few. “It’s a great honour, and I’m humbled and thrilled by it,” Balsillie said in a brief phone interview tucked between meetings in early May (with Phoenix Coyotes owner Jerry Moyes, perhaps? Balsillie’s bid for the bankrupt NHL franchise was on the table during the writing of this article). Balsillie’s recent honours are many. In April he and his wife Heidi received the Kitchener Rotary Clubs’ Paul Harris award for international and community service, and in May he and Lazaridis were inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame by Junior Achievement Canada. “It’s satisfying to be so relevant in our industry; it’s a great privilege,” he said. “To be relevant is the greatest joy and reward of it all.” The rewards have come with a few bumps along the way. Earlier this year RIM paid fines to both the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission relating to how it granted stock options between 1998 and 2006. These events have seemingly not affected the success of BlackBerry, and that success has allowed Balsillie to put his money behind the things he believes in. While partner Lazaridis’s philanthropic work leans more toward science and technology, Balsillie is more of a political and social sciences man, founding three initiatives that each build Canada’s capacity on global issues in a slightly different way. Why global affairs? “To me, they are the issues of our time,” he said. “They are borderless and they are intractable, so that’s why the focus on global governance is so important. [When we started] I tried to make a case that our commercial and domestic prosperity were completely intertwined with these global issues. That’s a lot easier case to make now than it was then. “Now we’ve got climate change, Arctic sovereignty, trade issues, nuclear proliferation, and surprise, global governance and health issues. These issues don’t respect our borders and yet all of our governing structures principally focus within our borders. That’s the dilemma.” Finding solutions on a global scale, literally, is the focus of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), the independent, non-partisan think tank Balsillie founded with $30 million of his own money in 2002. The centre, based in Waterloo and employing 60 people, supports research, advances policy debate, and generates ideas for international governance improvements. CIGI worked quietly behind the scenes for several years to encourage expansion of the G8 and helped facilitate the creation of the G20, which was formally established in November 2008. Now CIGI is engaged in a project called “G20 Watch,” which looks at the protectionist measures of countries that often play a role ineconomic crises. The centre has also been a key player in discussions about reforming the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and IFI (International Financial Institutions). The sister organization to CIGI is the CIC (Canadian International Council), a second think tank founded by Balsillie in 2007. “CIC focuses strictly on national priorities—what’s good for Canada in the world,” said Neve Peric, media relations director for both CIGI and CIC. The CIC has 13 branches nationwide, including one in Winnipeg established last fall with Nicholas Hirst as branch president.

Also in 2007, the Balsillie School of International Affairs sprang to life as a partnership between Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Waterloo, and CIGI. Students at the school prepare for careers in the fields of international affairs and global governance by focusing on a range of related disciplines. John English is CIGI’s executive director. He describes Balsillie’s commitment to build capacity in international affairs “extraordinary.” “He has given generously of his time and his unique entrepreneurial talents to inspire Canadians and others to face the challenges of more effective international governance. He has founded, chaired and is the principle benefactor of CIGI, the Balsillie School and the CIC. Together, they represent the most ambitious private initiative on international affairs in Canada and one of the most remarkable in the world.” Balsillie believes that the world today presents students in business schools with challenges that weren’t part of the curriculum when he was at Harvard. “My thoughts on business schools right now—I call it the ‘Uber MBA’—is that the traditional MBA, with the Socrative and case study method, is a subset of a much bigger set of aspects that a business person needs to attend to, because you get these unforeseen disruptors coming at you in business. “How you understand and deal with uncertainty is one of the most important things, if not the most important thing, about running a business, and trying to create certainty is an illusion, it’s irrational. So with that in mind an integrated view and capability is incredibly important.” A stroll through either of the CIGI or CIC websites paints a clear picture of the uncertainty and challenges facing the world today. Does Balsillie think we humans will figure it all out? “Will we reform outside of extreme chaos? That’s a good question,” he said. “I can’t fret about outcomes, I only focus on input. If you give the very best input that you can, then you will get the very best outcomes that are possible. “I don’t advocate one side of the issue or the other. We have to build capacity, period. If I can help do that and help people be persuaded that this is of great value, then I’m delighted with that.”