new movie blackberries A celebration of the much-loved phone. Starring Hollywood actors, it takes you behind the scenes in the rise and fall of the Waterloo, Ontario-based company RIM.
But it’s a love letter to innovation. BlackBerry has changed the way we work, live and communicate.
“How important was the innovation these nerds came up with above a Waterloo diner in 1996,” movie star Jay Baruchel told CBC News at a recent red carpet event.
It’s easy to look back at BlackBerry’s spectacular rise and fall and focus on its decline. But Baruchel wanted to make a film that celebrated its rise and how a small Canadian company changed the world.
“The way we participate in the world, the way we relate to each other, for better or worse, all rests on the shoulders of what they create,” Baruchel said.
“They have struggled in anonymity for so long, and we want people to know that we innovate, work hard, and make more than anyone else.”
Lack of innovation ecosystem in Canada
The rise of BlackBerry has shown that Canada, like any country on earth, is well suited to building and designing new technology. Engineers above Waterloo’s Diner have created an entirely new product class. At the same time, just outside Ottawa, Nortel engineers were pioneering an equally important area.
When they finally failed, there was no system to support the idea and work was still being done.
“In a system with the right kind of innovation policy and a real innovation environment, the collapse of both RIM and Nortel would have resulted in a mass of small companies that could scale quickly,” says Dan Breznitz. said.
He chairs Innovation Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He is also Co-Director of the Innovation Policy Lab and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Study (CIFAR).
He points to Silicon Valley in the United States. When Sun Microsystems went bankrupt after the dotcom bubble, dozens of small businesses stood to fill the void.
“Look where Apple and Google’s headquarters are now. They’re on the old Sun campus,” he said.
But when the Canadian tech giant went bankrupt, nothing emerged from the wreckage.
“In Canada, they’ve disappeared. In fact, if you really look at many of the best resources that used to belong to Nortel and Blackberry, they now belong to Huawei,” Breznitz told CBC News. “This underscores the horrendous failure of innovation policy and what a truly terrifying environment for the creation of innovation.”
‘We need to get back to basics’
RIM’s co-CEO, who helped make BlackBerry a global staple, said there was an urgent need to solve Canada’s innovation problem.
Jim Barsilley, Chairman of the Canadian Council of Innovators and Founder of the International Governance Center, said: Innovation and Digital Rights Center.
He is a longtime advocate for better innovation policy in Canada.
“Canada has no chance of becoming an innovation economy until policymakers understand which way they are going,” he wrote in an email to CBC News.
If anything, the global environment is more difficult than when Balsillie was building BlackBerry. Economists like Lois Mendez, managing director of financial services firm Desjardins, said the pressure on Canada is now even higher.
“Innovation is going at breakneck speed and we have to keep up,” Mendes told CBC News. It’s very different,” he said.
The first step in developing an innovation plan is to make policy makers understand the meaning of innovation. It may sound simple, but most experts agree that politicians don’t always have a good grasp of the difference between invention and innovation.
According to Breznitz, inventions are new ideas, and innovations are the support systems that build markets and encourage more inventions.
“Innovation is uncertain and risky.”
Once that’s settled, the next challenge is convincing Canadian companies to innovate. And Breznitz said it’s harder than you might think.
He said that in an environment where companies can make money without taking big risks, innovation is doomed to struggle. Looking at big Canadian companies, from mining to forestry, telecoms to banks, there isn’t a lot of competition and the regulatory hurdles are big, he added.
Companies like Shopify have shown how innovation can drive growth and profits. Financial services companies like WealthSimple have changed the way Canadians think about the banking sector.
But that level of innovation remains rare in Canada’s elite business circles.
Regulatory hurdles also force entrepreneurs to think twice before attempting to build anything in Canada.
Breznitz said entrepreneurs should consider whether they can build a product. The entrepreneur then has to consider whether the customer will buy the product. But even if you can achieve both, I’m not sure you can sell the product in Canada.
“So multiple entrepreneurs and companies are either not bothered to try because the uncertainty is so high, including regulatory uncertainty, or they move to the US to do it. Only, and they say, pardon my words.” ‘ said Brenitz. He points to everything from new green technologies to financial services that are preventing anyone from even trying to set up a business in Canada.
Mendez agrees that too much regulation can be a roadblock. But he said his real secret was finding balance, pointing to the banking crisis that devastated the US financial system.
“Tighter regulation can sometimes protect the Canadian economy, and 2008-2009 is a prime example,” Mendez said. “There must be a careful balance between regulation, competitiveness and innovation.”
On all issues, everyone interviewed for this article expressed a keen sense of optimism about the future. They say Canada has great universities that have created a highly educated workforce. And slowly, they say, politicians are taking action.
In February, the federal government announced the Canadian Innovation Corporation, a massive $2.6 billion investment over four years.
CIC provides funding ranging from $50,000 to $5 million per project. Large R&D projects can raise as much as $20 million per project.
Breznitz is known as the architect of CIC. He sounds cautiously optimistic about its prospects for success.
“In a couple of years, we should already see some change,” he said. “And 15 years from now he’ll say, ‘Wow, we actually did.’ But that’s a very big if.”
one of the best parts of blackberries The film follows entrepreneurs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Barsily as they struggle to grow and build. Their team is thriving. And the world fell in love with their product.
Policy alone cannot replicate it. But government policy can ensure that systems are in place that help entrepreneurs thrive and mitigate failures when they occur.
