Mike Lazaridis (Blackberry) at AAAS 2012 in Vancouver next month?

Set to appear on Friday, Feb. 17, 2012 as a plenary speaker at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting, Mike Lazaridis will be speaking about The Power of Ideas.

Lazaridis’ presence (assuming he shows up) is likely to add a frisson of excitement given today’s announcement that he is stepping down as co-chief executive officer (CEO) of the company he helped found, Research in Motion (RIM) which produces the Blackberry mobile device. (Thorsten Heins, a four-year employee with the company and former Siemens AG executive, will be RIM’s new CEO.)

I was intrigued months ago when I saw Laziridis was scheduled to speak partly because of his company’s importance and current travails, partly due to his connection to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (as I recall he provides/ed much of the institute’s funding), and partly his communication strategies.

I’m inferring from the little I’ve been able to observe that Lazaridis does not perform well when criticized or attacked. There was a court case back in 2001 in the US, where Lazaridis seems to have engaged in a ‘pissing contest’ with a company I’ve often seen described as a patent troll, NTP Incorporated. I gather he initially dismissed the litigation as frivolous (did he dare them to sue?). Unfortunately he did that publicly, never a good idea when you’re engaged in a court case where people are likely to read your comments in the press. Five years later, RIM lost the case and had to pay NTP over a complicated legal argument (you can read more about that here). Frankly, it seems wrong that RIM should have had to pay money to a company that files patents for the sole purpose of suing other companies.

I’d dismiss the incident but, more recently, it took Lazaridis too long to apologize for a major service outage. In October 2011, service was lost by customers in Europe and elsewhere for three days before an apology was forthcoming. Interestingly, that was around the time the outage began to affect North American customers. Also, he’s been far less visible publicly over the last few months. (Note: Lazaridis has tended to be the public face/spokesperson for RIM, while Jim Balsillie, his co-CEO) had performed that function less frequently.)

I am looking forward to how Lazaridis performs in Vancouver in February 2012 at the AAAS meeting (Feb. 16-20).

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