Founders at Work.pdf

C H A P T E R
10
Mike Lazaridis
Cofounder, Research In Motion
Mike Lazaridis founded Research In Motion (RIM)
with his friend Doug Fregin in 1984 while still an
undergraduate at the University of Waterloo. One of
their first projects was a local area network that ran
industrial displays. Near the end of Lazaridis’s senior
year, they landed a $600,000 contract to build a similar
network for General Motors. A few weeks shy of
his graduation, Lazaridis left school to focus full-time
on the company.
RIM was one of the first companies to appreciate
the importance of wireless networks. In the early
1990s, when email was still largely unknown in corporate
America, Lazaridis foresaw the potential of mobile email. A series of
projects in this area culminated in 1999 in the BlackBerry, now the dominant
product in this market.
The BlackBerry was one of those innovations that not only became popular,
but changed the way organizations operate. Some of the most powerful people
in business and politics run their lives with this device.
RIM went public in 1997, and is one of Canada’s most admired technology
companies.
Livingston: How did you get started with Research In Motion? How did you
know Doug?
Lazaridis: I knew Doug from grade school, but we started working together in
high school. Our high school had a state-of-the-art electronics and shop program
that was the result of a donation from a local industrialist. When all this
equipment had arrived, it was still in crates. I had asked to open some of the
boxes and pull out the equipment, and I remember the teacher saying, “Well,
you can open any box you like, but there’s one condition: you have to read the
manual first.”
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