Are you thinking like an iPhone or a Blackberry?

Blackberry

Mike Lararidis was a science prodigy. He excelled academically and stood out from his peers at school. When Mike invented the Blackberry he was thinking like a scientist. The keyboard on most wireless email devices was too small causing people to have to forward their email which at the time took an age to download.

The concept behind the Blackberry was simple - what if people could type an email with their thumbs instead of fingers? Could we synchronise mailboxes so it would be more convenient? This lead to the success of a product that had celebrities and business leaders raving about how essential it was for their lives. At one time, BlackBerry controlled 50% of the smartphone market in the US and 20% globally. BlackBerry figured out a way to make its phone indispensable to the wealthy and powerful.

Roll on the summer of 2007 and across Mike's desk landed an iPhone. Initially, he was stunned by the computing power apparently remarking "they've put a Mac in this thing." As iPhone started to take off Mike was pushed by his engineers to add on an internet browser, but Mike declined to tell them to focus only on email. He was convinced that an internet browser would drain the battery and strain the bandwidth of wireless networks. In 2010 when concerns on the lack of functionality on the Blackberry started to gain traction at the firm Mike's colleagues pitched using encrypted messages to be exchanged on competitors devices. Mike expressed his concerns that this would render the Blackberry obsolete (although the concept would later become Whatsapp). There were no significant changes to Blackberry made and Lararidis led the company into an eventual decline.

Apple

Steve Jobs was not only the co-founder of Apple. The posthumous view of him was the visionary who pioneered what it was to 'think different.' However, the reality was that Jobs was doing anything but this initially in the mobile phone market. Jobs was publicly resistant to the concept of getting into the mobile phone market as he thought they "sucked." Brian Merchant who wrote the book 'The Secret History of the iPhone' mentioned that Steve Jobs was actually not really interested in the concept of the iPhone. Only really trusting in the creativity of his employees more than this particular vision. "The iPhone began as an experimental project undertaken without his knowledge." Apparently, in a meeting in 2004 where a small group of engineers pitched the initial concept of turning the then very successful iPod into a phone, Jobs said "why the F*&k would we want to do that!? That is the dumbest idea I have ever heard."

Over time - the engineers worked closely with Jobs and convinced him that they had no intention of turning Apple from a computer company into a phone company. Apple with the iPod - had begun the process of putting everything into your pocket so why wouldn't we do it with the phone too?

After 6 months of debating, Jobs eventually gave in to the team to develop the product. The iPhone was launched in 2007 and it became their most successful product.

What was the difference between the two?

What separated the fortunes of the 2 companies was nothing to do with intelligence. Both men were extremely gifted, forward-thinking and capable to lead. I'm sure the teams for both were also just as creative and skilled. Intelligence perhaps could have even been more of a hindrance in Laraidis's case. The man who had been a gifted scientist and been able to achieve great successes through a structured and methodical process was unable to conceptually think outside what he had become so professionally and personally attached to.

Knowledge can often be a curse when mixed with status as it closes our minds to accept what we don't know. A prerequisite of good judgement is the willingness to remain humble in the face of uncertain outcomes and almost all outcomes involve a level of uncertainty.

We often consider our skills in life in more typical domains - academics, craftsmanship, physicality or perhaps emotional intelligence? What about mental dexterity? The ability to reframe our own thinking so that we can keep our minds open to wider concepts that may be beyond our current horizons. These dynamics are so often seen in emerging technologies but there are just as many examples in business and in life.

Often in life, we conflate an outcome with luck which could more harshly, be explained by ‘tunnel vision thinking.’ What if Lazaridis had instead of sticking with what had worked previously had been willing to be creative in this outlook in a changing landscape? Do we too often allow the status quo to define our outcomes (financial services take note) and in a world of vast technological change can gain insight from these lessons? The one thing we know that played a huge part in the separation of fortunes for Blackberry and Apple. It was the willingness of their leader to change their preconceptions - to think again.

Credit to Adam Grant for the inspiration for this post - more on this in an upcoming episode